Nature Literature discussion

If you prefer to read Winter World in December, please add your commentary here.

thank you for this, Becky. Too many books and too little time, right? But I really appreciate this. I'll be reading the other, also. Eventually.

I have slowly read three chapters: snow (and bought Bentley's Snow Crystals), snowshoe hare, crossbills and winter kills of deer by bobcat and lynx. I know where I might find the hares now (further up the mountain) and to find the deer kills. I have always known about the deer kills but never wanted to find them. We come across scattered skeletons in the spring, but that is not as gruesome a find. We find porcupine dens all the time in winter and track the many types of rodents. But there is much more going on out in the woods.

I may be the only one reading this. I see that Pam read it last winter.

Time to get the snow shoes out.

I plan to read it again this month. It is one of those books!

So good to see you today, Pam, and wanted to tell you about this radio show about the kinglet. Now I know I hear them all the time and they have confused me. Have never seen one, but they sound like little crickets in the snow. They hang out with chickadees. McFarland mentions Heinrich and kinglet cuddling. But the woods are already nearly impassable with snow (well, they are impassable here, and more and more snow is coming). But I can wade out to the woods edge and sit and listen. If it ever warms up enough to sit outside.

http://digital.vpr.net/post/outdoor-r...

A copy of my review:

I am getting closer to reading all of Heinrich's books. Each book leads me to more photographic quests and more reading from other sources. While reading this on my Kindle, I kept a running list of things to look for in the woods. The priority is Golden-crowned kinglets, a dime-sized bird that often flies with chickadees. I have heard them thousands of times and can easily recognize their calls. But few people have seen them because they are so small and elusive. Winter World describes the natural history of the northern New England winter and discusses food, habitats, life histories and observation techniques for naturalists to learn the interconnections of an ecosystem. The kinglet is the center of the winter world here. We learn about the other animals and plants that it interacts with and wonder about the plants and animals that the bird does not interact with.

I won't list my list of quests from this book. It could be boring to someone who does not live here. Instead, I have questions for Heinrich:
How do you safely navigates the bog in winter and summer? We can easily go in summer (after the red-winged blackbirds leave), hopping from tussock to tussock and hopefully not landing in mud that sucks off our boots. There are conservation laws here that restrict our access to the bog and we faithfully follow these laws. At times I am baffled at how easily Heinrich negotiates his travels in the bog.

The usage of units: in a preface, you specifically mention that you are using Celsius units. That is fine for the entire world. Just not here. Even though I occasionally teach the metric system, I continue to have problems negotiating between our American units and metric units. The book is about our area, so please convert the units to what we are used to. Put the conversions in parentheses, but please put them. In several places, however, you abandon your Celsius units and suddenly only use Fahrenheit. Inconsistent! But at least I know that -40°F=-40°C. That was a huge help during reading, since our temperature can, and have, dipped that low.

You write that you have never seen native, non-migratory birds eat winterberries. We have. The turkeys will eat them, leaving huge messes behind as only turkeys can do.

Word of mouth here has it that hibernating bears in winter are dangerous. They can easily be woken up, are very grouchy, and often leave their den during sunny winter days to eat. We, and most of the people we know, carry guns in the woods because of the bears and because of other animals that may be dangerous. After reading this book, though, I am wondering if this common lore is correct. You say that bears do not eat at all in the winter, even if they do wake up. And they usually never leave their dens. I will still carry a gun in the winter, though, just in case I fall into a bear's den.

Finally, I'd like to quote a paragraph with a great anecdote from page 196 about a mythical village here in the Kingdom:

There is a whimsical story of the townsfolk in a village in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont— an isolated backwoods area known for its cold winters— where the residents of one little village were said to avoid the awful winters by downing a few stiff drinks in the fall and then freezing themselves solid and then unthawing to resume an active life at an appropriate time in the spring.

You can't live in the Kingdom without reading this book. Our winters deserve your attention.

Thanks for the review, Andree - that was great! :)

thank you!

Loving your review and my rereading of Winter World. I hope to write a review in the next week. But more than that I hope to be in the woods every day!

Andree wrote: "So good to see you today, Pam, and wanted to tell you about this radio show about the kinglet. Now I know I hear them all the time and they have confused me. Have never seen one, but they sound lik..."

I am excited to find out about them since reading that part of his book. Love his illustrations but there is nothing like hearing the song...