Bernd Heinrich (1) (1940–)

Originally published in 2007. I really would have enjoyed this book more if we had ravens in this area, in Southeast Texas, but, we don’t. They are mostly Yankee birds. Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen a crow out here on our ten acres, which is kind of in the country and surrounded by woods on two sides. Now why is that? Not enough food source? I have seen some crows in town in parking lots of malls and hospitals, but never even a crow around here.

I found parts of this book very interesting, and other parts kind of long, tedious and drawn out. This author’s research was focused more in a controlled environment, although he was able to study ravens pretty intensely out in the wild, too. He owned two aviaries, one in Vermont, and his main ½-acre aviary in Maine, where he captured, raised a few, and studied ravens throughout the 1990’s. Since science research progresses one tiny little step at a time, I’m sure his observations will add to the understanding of ravens and their behavior. And if you live where ravens live, you, at least, will now have more knowledge and understanding of what some of their calls and postures mean after reading this book.

I’m not sure how he ever managed to find time to get married and have children. The time it takes to feed and study these birds is incredible. I can’t imagine how often he had to go out hunting down dead carcasses and preparing them to be fed to his subjects day-in and day-out. Ravens eat an incredibly large amount of food, and feed about every two hours. Plus, the time to sit for hours upon hours in the freezing rain and snow just observing, or sitting inside his home and observing secretly through his bedroom window that opened up to the aviary, where he may have had up to 20 birds at any one time. Add the time he took to plan and prepare for activities to test their ability to be able to problem solve through a situation or not, and all the traveling he did to other countries just to observe ravens from another point of view. And keep in mind the fact that he had to keep a detailed log of the whole process on top of it all. And now, here is the book, detailing it all in just one volume…just for our pleasure. I wish we had ravens around here so I could observe them.… (mere)