Birds of a feather
Richard Adams
RAVENS IN WINTER by Bernd Heinrich
Barrie & Jenkins, .£16.99, pp. 379
The great Ronald Lockley, at whose ornithological feet I have sat for the past 15 years or so, once said to me, 'There isn't really any more to find out about the birds. The job of ornithologists world-wide now is simply to keep them under observation — watch movements, declines and growths in species and so on.' If this book is anything to go by, he may have been marginally mistaken — in the matter of ravens, anyway.
Bernd Heinrich is Professor of Zoology at the University of Vermont and on the evidence of this book still relatively young. Some few years ago, during his trips to the northern wilds of north-east America, he began to notice something which struck him as odd, and indeed unique in the be- haviour of the indigenous ravens. To all appearances they encouraged newcomers and shared food with one another, instead of keeping it to themselves and fighting other birds off (which is what all other creatures do). Ravens feed from the car- casses of dead animals, and it appeared as though certain ravens, at any rate, were actually going out of their way to attract others to these carcasses and ensuring that they got a fair share. Such behaviour, it seemed to Heinrich, was unparalleled among birds and he entered upon a labor- ious and extremely spartan programme of investigation to find out whether it was true and, if so, why they should do it.
He had a mountain hut in the wilds of Maine, of excruciating discomfort and absence of resources, and there and there- abouts, for about four years, usually in bitter cold (he didn't light fires because the smoke would frighten off the ravens), he accorded to the birds the most painstaking observation. Ravens are not particularly numerous in those parts and he would often sit waiting for hours at a time without seeing any at all. Then again, they would suddenly appear in large numbers. Why?
He acquired carcasses of goats, sheep and cows (on one occasion, 200 lbs of cow) and by the greatest exertions lugged and manhandled them into appropriate places in the wilderness and left them for the birds to find. More often than not the ravens' be- haviour was inconsistent and inexplicable.
Heinrich was hard on himself intellect- ually, too. He persisted in being sceptical and hard to convince. He refused to give way to wishful thinking. He picked holes in all his own theories and ruthlessly rejected them almost as fast as they occurred to him. Yet it remained beyond dispute that some ravens, at certain times and in certain circumstances, set out to attract other ravens to carcasses to share with them. There can seldom have been such a re- markable display of ornithological perserverance (in horrible privation) since men began seriously observing bird be- haviour.
Heinrich ultimately found his answer, which I would imagine certainly does add an important new dimension to our under- standing of ravens and, therefore, conceiv- ably, of birds as a whole. I am not going to give it away. Apart from anything else, it is too complex and qualified to be summa- rised in a review. The book ends with a summary of no fewer than 53 observed conclusions, scholastically divided into three categories numbering 11, 33 and nine. These, taken together, 'add up', as Heinrich puts it, into 'only one major picture or pattern' drawn from the differ- ent sets of data. (The number of alterna- tive patterns that I see is in inverse proportion to the number of facts I simul- taneously keep in mind.)' This certainly has all the hallmarks of thoroughness and self-sacrificing, painstaking precision which one has come to associate with the best American scholarship.
It should be emphasised that this book is not likely to be of interest to people other than committed ornithologists. It is, in a word, obsessive. However, it is well- written, graphic (the bits about the hardships endured fairly make the blood run cold) and readable. This is refreshing in comparison with most of the zoological books that one tries to read, which usually exemplify Snow's 'two cultures' all too plainly. The odd Americanism creeps in: I wish Heinrich wouldn't talk about 'bonan- zas' when he means feasts or repasts. But such irritants are few. The book is too long — 313 relentless pages, plus another 20 of diagrams and 17 of notes — but he was evidently determined to write the book primarily for his own satisfaction and as a definitive ornithological work. As such, it is to be commended.
Incidentally, for a fine danger, how about this? 'Ravens at one time existed in great numbers even within the city of London. They acted as the city garbage . crew, and in the 17th century a flock of them alerted Charles II's guards when Oliver Cromwell attempted a raid.' I won- der which raven told him that? I'm sure his editor didn't. The book could have done with a bit of judicious editing.
The raven has always been a numinous and powerful mythological figure through- out every part of the world where it is found. Professor Heinrich is fully aware of it, and covers this appealing aspect of his subject in a most enjoyable introduction.
He suggests that the reason why Noah's raven didn't come back was probably because it found floating carcasses on which it could both rest and feed. He also ingeniously suggests that possibly the way in which the ravens fed Elijah (1 Kings xvii) was to show him, by their gathering, where there were fresh carcasses of which he could make use himself. Heinrich knows, too, all about Raven, the Inuit trickster-hero. Altogether, a cultured and knowledgeable man.
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