Mind of the raven Investigations and adventures with wolf-birds

Review by Booklist Review

The common raven, Corvus corax, is the world's largest crow, measuring from 22 to 27 inches long, and it can be found in much of North America. Heinrich, a University of Vermont biologist and illustrator, is the author of The Trees in My Forest, a homage to the rhythms of life in his 300-acre Maine forest, and Ravens in Winter. He has studied ravens at his Vermont home, at his Maine cabin, and as far away as the Arctic. Here, he writes about this highly intelligent bird's fascinating behavior, the result of his observations, experiments, and experiences (including raising young ravens to adulthood, giving them such names as Fuzz and Houdi). This is not a scholarly work but rather a fond tribute to these feathered creatures. --George Cohen

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In a book that demonstrates the rewards of caring and careful observation of the natural world, Heinrich (Ravens in Winter, etc.), a noted biologist, Guggenheim fellow and National Book Award nominee (for Bumblebee Economics, 1979), explores the question of raven intelligence through observation, experiment and personal experience. Although he has raised many ravens through the years (beginning with a tame pair that shared his apartment at UCLA in the 1960s), Heinrich focuses much of his attention on four nestlings he adopted from the Maine woods near his home. As he describes tending to the demanding babies, chopping up roadkill, cleaning up after them and enduring their noisy calls for food, readers will marvel at how much Heinrich knows and at how much joy he derives from acquiring that knowledge. As the birds mature, Heinrich details how these and other ravens feed, nest, mate, play and establish a society with clear hierarchical levels. At its best, his writing is distinguished by infectious enthusiasm, a lighthearted style and often lyrical descriptions of the natural world. His powers of observation are impressive and his descriptionsÄof how a raven puffs its feathers in a dominance display, of how a female calls for food from her mate, of the pecking order at a carcassÄare formidably precise. Toward the end of the book, Heinrich addresses the question implied by the title: To what degree can ravens be said to think? His answer: "I suspect that the great gulf or discontinuity that exists between us and all other animals is... ultimately less a matter of consciousness than of culture." Illustrations. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

This work details Heinrich's (A Year in the Maine Woods) research into the life of ravens. Listeners will experience awe when he encounters them in the wild and in controlled situations and will enjoy the author's discoveries along with him. Norman Dietz narrates, and it is as if the author is recounting the tales. However, the audiobook is 17 hours in length, and there is much more about how the research was conducted than what was learned. If listeners are interested in hearing about research biology, this will be the perfect title, but those looking to hear about the wonder of ravens will have to be patient. VERDICT This is a solid story for those interested in biological research but perhaps not for the casual listener. ["A fine, entertaining book for general readers, as well as an excellent resource for those seeking meticulously gathered and documented scientific information": LJ 12/99 review of the Cliff Street hc.]-Eric Albright, Tufts Univ. Health Sciences Lib., Boston © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Still wild about ravens after all these years, award-winning zoologist Heinrich (Univ. of Vermont; The Trees in My Forest, 1997, etc.) continues his investigations into the big crow's behavior. What makes ravens tick, or, if you prefer, quork? What fires their love of baubles, their delight in tomfoolery? Why have so many cultures portrayed the birds as creators and destroyers, prophets and clowns and tricksters? Are they sentient? Do they scheme? To what use do they put that sizable brain? Heinrich has shared a lot of forest time with ravens over the years, trying to gain perspective on these questions. He has come away with an admittedly incomplete if anecdotally rich picture of the bird, one that bears up the historical image of a canny creature that trumps our expectations. Here is a bird that willingly incubates eggs that are obviously not its own, the smart guy falling for the oldest parasitic trick in the book. Yet here is also a bird that can sit down at the table, to a nicely fatted calf, say, with wolves and golden eagles, animals that are known to serve raven when the calves are scarce. Heinrich freely shares the glimmerings of real understanding he has made'much the same way as ravens share food finds (in apparent, and typical, anti-evolutionary spirit)'including the exploratory/carnal fixation the raven has with bijouterie, and how many ravens it takes to fish the Yellowstone River for cutthroat. But when it comes to measuring the ravens' intelligence, Heinrich suggests it would be folly to do so in human terms: We are, in effect, culturally incomparable, and for all the seeming pleasure we take in one another's company, how the bird goes about interpreting the world remains closed to us, enigmatic and contradictory as ever. Left unsaid in this learned study is how many hours Heinrich sat motionless in the deep-space cold of a Maine winter to gather these observations. There lies the gauge of his enterprise, understanding, and passion. (illustrations, not seen)

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Mind of the Raven Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds Chapter One Becoming a Raven Father The first prerequisite for studying any animal is to get and to stay close. You must be able to observe the fine details of its behavior for long periods of time without the animal seeing or feeling your presence. That's a tall order with wild ravens in northeastern America. In my part of the country, where food is sparsely distributed, ravens may range over a hundred square miles a day, and they fly away at the mere sight of a human. Ravens are shyer and more alert, and have keener vision than any other wild animal I know, making it even more difficult to watch their natural undisturbed behavior. Given these difficulties, I felt I needed to try to obtain young and to be a surrogate parent to them. It was perhaps the only way to learn about many aspects of their intimate social behavior. Obtaining and living with young ravens has its inconveniences, not the least of which is making the hazardous ascents to get them from the nest. The trees that ravens like to nest in are not the ones I like to climb. The last few patches of winter snow were left in the shady places under fir trees. The ice had just melted off Hills Pond, and the first warblers were back. But in Maine at the end of April 1993, still a month before the maples would leaf out, that year's baby ravens would already have a coat of black feathers. I was on my way to two different nests. I would take two young of the clutch of four to six I expected to find in each nest. I would then have to attend to every need of the young birds. It was snowing, and the great pine tree with the first ravens' nest was swaying in the north wind coming across the lake. I wanted to run, but I held myself to a walk, trying to conserve as much energy as possible for the climb ahead. More than once before, I had been frightened when I found myself hanging on to a thick limbless pine trunk as strength ebbed from my arms. The void above the tops of the fir trees seemed to expand as my grip grew less secure. White feces were spattered on the ground below the nest, a sign that the young were already beyond the pinfeather stage. At this nest, which I had visited often in previous years, only the adult male scolded me; the female always left when I came near. At other nests, both members of the pair may scold, both leave, or one or both remain at some distance. After carefully putting on climbing spurs and adjusting my backpack, I put my arms around the tree and started. Go slowly, I kept telling myself, one step at a time. I tried to keep looking up, not down. I got very tired just as the solid limbs were getting closer. Fortunately, having trained over the winter to do chin-ups, I was able to sustain the effort. As I hauled myself up onto the first solid limbs, I felt elated. I had once again escaped the fate of some other ornithologists in similar situations. George Miksch Sutton fell from a cliff while climbing up to a raven nest, but was saved by falling on a ledge before hitting the bottom of the cliff. Fellow raven researcher Thomas Grünkorn once fell eighty feet out of the top of a beech, breaking his back in two places. Miraculously, he lived and did climb again (see Chapter 7). Gustav Kramer, an ornithologist studying wild pigeons, died when rocks came loose as he was climbing up to a cliff nest. I am quite frightened of cliffs, by comparison feeling almost safe with tree limbs to hang onto. The tree was swaying mightily in the gusts, but it had not been blown over in worse gales, and it would not fall or break now. Besides, there was nothing I could do about it. So no worries. Four fully feathered young hunkered down in a very soggy nest. It had rained steadily for the last two days, and the heavy, waterlogged nest was badly tilting because one of the supporting branches was too thin. The four young were very chunky, clumsy, and cute. When I lifted two out to put them into my knapsack, I noticed their huge bare bulging bellies. They didn't struggle or complain, and the climb back down was easy. With four young finally resting in the bottom of the knapsack, I hiked home to put my new charges into their new nest -- a basket packed with dead grass and leaves almost all the way to the top, so that they could defecate out over the edge. I talked to them in low soft tones, and they immediately broke their silence and answered in raspy raven baby talk. They were almost feathered out, and looked at me with bright blue eyes (which would turn gray near fledging and brown by winter). They raised pinfeathery heads and opened their big pink mouths (mouth linings and tongue turn black only after one to three or more years, depending on the birds' social status). They were begging to be fed! Such trust, especially after just being taken from their nest, is unique for a bird already at least a month old. It Is especially surprising given that ravens are innately shy of anything new. As adults, ravens in Maine are among the most shy of all birds. These young had long been exposed only to their parents and siblings, yet they responded to me unabashed. Did they somehow hear something in my voice that put them at ease? Their sounds tugged at my heart, and I sprang to action. We quickly established a rapport and I chopped up whatever meat I could find, usually roadkills, and fed the ravens bite-sized chunks at about hourly intervals, just as raven parents do in the wild. Baby ravens and crows need a pharmacopeia of proteins, minerals, and vitamins. I fed mine minced mice, grubs, eggs, fish, and chopped frogs... Mind of the Raven Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds . Copyright © by Bernd Heinrich. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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