Author observes wild geese on nearby pond, learning much about their habits and personalities.

Go outside and look at a bird. No? I don't blame you - birds are boring and don't do much. Or so I thought! Put a pen to paper, and their exploits are funny and full of drama. If this book had been exclusively about the geese, it would have been five stars, without a doubt. The author's observations of other bog goings-on were respectable, but dull - though not so dull that I can't heartily recommend the book. ( )

I've always liked books on animal behaviour, especially if they lean towards the scientific as much as the anecdotal and exclude all pc chat about environmentalism which might be important but makes boring reading. This book is a carefully observed account of several Canada geese and rather a lot of songbirds plus some quite interesting beavers over a period of some years.

It wasn't in the class of the despicable Konrad Lorenz's King Solomon's Ring or Here Am I--Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose both wonderful books I read years ago. But it did explain why Konrad Lorenz was a Nazi who was fully behind - indeed helped develop - the appalling racial policies that led to the murder of millions of Jews, half a million Serbs and up to two million Gypsies - all of whom were considered untermensch, subhuman polluters of the white Aryan nation of Germany and its allies.

It all came about because many geese can interbreed with others - Canada geese can certainly interbreed with snow geese and greylag geese. Lorenz felt that an animal's behaviour was not only a function of learning but also of its evolutionary descent and adaption to environment. He felt that man's changing of the environment and domestication of animals mean that these hybrids that would otherwise be pruned out in the wild would thrive and might gain a reproductive advantage over the wild species and would exhibit non-species specific behaviour that would degrade the wild species to an inferior, 'mongrelised' one. Therefore, adhering to Nazi principles, placing the species above the individual, he felt that purity of race would only be preserved by rigorously exterminating the 'hybrids'.

He rejected empirical evidence that his theory simply wasn't true and extrapolated it to humans: Jews, Gypsies, Serbs, homosexuals etc would degrade and make inferior the wonderful 'pure, white, Christian' Aryan nation and should therefore unsentimentally be exterminated. At one stage he was himself administering tests of 'worthiness' on people and those who failed went to concentration camps where they were subsequently murdered.

Although Lorenz later tried to worm out of much of his collaboration with the Nazis, a direct quote from him shows his culpability and despicability: "Just as with cancer-suffering [for which:] mankind cannot give any other advice than to recognise the evil as soon as possible and then eradicate it, so racial hygiene defense against elements afflicted with defects is likewise restricted to employ the same primitive measures."

For elucidating the connection between Lorenz's scientific studies on the greylag goose and his promulgation of the Holocaust on racial grounds, I upgraded this book from a 3.5 star to a 5 star. Its a very readable, well-written book, very gentle, nicely illustrated and apart from a page or two, totally non-political. A good read.
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Canada geese up close and personal

I don’t usually like stories that start with making a pet out of a wild animal. They are often sentimental and didactic; filled with moral lessons. (Ugh!) And real stories that start this way frequently end badly for the animals. So although I really love Canada geese and this author was highly recommended, the book’s opening put me off. Heinrich begins by explaining how he came to study a small flock of geese because he wanted to know what happened to the gosling, Peep, he had fostered and released. But I was quickly won over by Heinrich’s meticulously detailed observations of the small flock Peep joins.

Most well known studies of this type examine rare or, at least, charismatic species in exotic locations (think Goodall and chimps or Fossey and mountain gorillas). But this warmly told story of these common birds (rather too common to many people’s minds) just down the path from the author’s home is equally enlightening. Heinrich shows these wild birds as individuals striving for what all creatures want; a mate, offspring, a decent place to raise them.

His close observation of just a few geese over multiple seasons contributes a great deal to understanding the behavior of these wild birds. He reinforces what most people already know about Canadas (for example, they are careful and defensive parents) while also overturning what many widely believe (for example, they are only about as monogamous as people). The author’s photos and sketches help explain the science and add visual beauty to the publication. For me, the most interesting parts of the book explained why the geese did what Heinrich observed. Then the geese become fully individual characters that every good story needs. ( )

On April 22, 2007, I noticed a pair of nesting geese on the beaver ponds across the road. I was disappointed that they choose to nest here because I had been told they were aggressive and would make the ponds their own, chasing out other water fowl. That seemed to be confirmed when I saw that no mallards, wood ducks or mergansers nested here as they had before. I decided that I may as well take advantage of the presence of these birds and photograph their young when they hatched. These photos in this review were taken at 10x zoom. (See my blog to view the photos.)

I saw the three goslings soon after they hatched (but was never able to photograph them), but only for a day or two. The family quickly disappeared. I was concerned that they had been eaten by fox or coyote. Then in July, Wingnut and I went to Crystal Lake State Park to swim and there was my goose family. They had integrated into life at the park and were eating and pooping very well. The goslings were nearly as big as the parents.

The park staff was asking people to not feed the geese, but were ignored. A ranger told me that they had to clean fifty pounds of geese droppings a day and it was becoming tiresome. It was impossible to walk barefoot as we usually do. But the geese were pleasant, not aggressive, and enjoyable to observe, especially since I knew that they were "mine."

I have always wondered how the family got to Crystal Lake, a mile down the road and over at least one beaver dam and a huge falls at the Barton Waterworks. Why did they leave? Was the water at the beaver pond polluted in some way? Did the food supply in the ponds suddenly become scarce? Did the goslings walk or were they carried?

Heinrich wrote the amazingly personal and engaging book, The Geese of Beaver Bog, about his observations of a group of geese from 1997 - 2003. Heinrich is a professor of biology at the University of Vermont. I have read his book Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds (after observing ravens rolling in fresh snow) and have heard him talk about bees and other topics on Vermont Public Radio and National Public Radio.

This book is a wonderful resource for me. Heinrich's experiences with his geese and beaver pond are remarkably similar to mine. We are both in Vermont, so the plants and animals are the same, and the bird populations are similar. Reading this book was like sharing experiences with a friend who doesn't only know the pond, but understands the excitement and sadness that I see here. He would feel as badly as I did when a crow stole a young redwing blackbird. Or when I heard the killing of a deer one night. He would chuckle at the scene of the coyote meeting a beaver face to face on the ice.

Canadian geese are precocial: they are able to be independent after hatching. The goslings are not fed by the parents. They mimic the parent's behavior and quickly learn what wisdom they need to continue surviving. And the parents do take the goslings to other ponds and lakes after hatching. The beaver pond, with its mink, weasels, foxes and coyotes, is not safe for the youngsters. Heinrich's geese walked two miles through cow pastures to a new pond. Mine walked through the woods where there were many dangers from predators that could not be easily seen by the parents.

Geese will try to return to nest where they are born. So I will most likely be seeing geese here for some years to come. Geese pairs do not necessarily mate for life. They tend to be monogamous but life interferes with our plans: mates are killed, or are chased away. I learned about different groups of geese in North America ("races") and about their migration.

We tend to categorize animals as cute, smart, companions, pests, killers, unimportant — there is no end to how we judge which animals are worthy of living. But once we understand their complex behaviors and how they interact, we begin to identify with them and judge them worthy of living on earth with us. We are now concerned about the survival of mountain gorillas, wolves and other animals because of books and movies that personalize their lives. The Geese of Beaver Bog personalized the natural lives of geese for me. It demystified their behaviors, asked questions that I would like answered, and removed the "pest" stigma from them.

I believed geese were nuisances but now that I know them better, I will protect their right to survive in the beaver ponds. I won't be hoping that they never return. I will be re-reading this book in the spring so that I am prepared to better observe, and enjoy, the behaviors of the geese.

On October 16, 2007, the geese began to fly south. It was, for me, a sad moment.
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