The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey Through a Century of Biology by Bernd Heinrich

Intriguing memoir of father and son zoologists

Bernd Heinrich is a German-American entomologist, ornithologist, and professor of biology at the University of Vermont. In addition to his scientific papers published in academic journals, he has written quite a few books on science and nature for the general public. Bernd’s father Gerd Heinrich (1896–1984) was a self-taught naturalist, zoologist, and entomologist. The Snoring Bird, published in 2007, is a dual (auto)biography, written by Bernd Heinrich, about his father’s life as well as his own. The title refers to a rare Indonesian bird, the snoring rail or Celebes rail, that Gerd pursued on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History. This father-son memoir provides a revealing look into the lives and research pursuits of these two scientists. By following the arcs of their scientific careers, the reader gains an understanding of how practices and priorities in the field of biology have changed over the past century.

Bernd Heinrich’s upbringing was uncommon, to say the least. His father was involved in unconventional relationships with women that amounted to unofficial polygamy, with three—sometimes four, perhaps—wives/lovers living together in the same household. One of these was Bernd’s biological mother, but for all intents and purposes he was raised by three moms. Though the Heinrich family was German by heritage, they owned a feudal estate called Borowke, located at times (and currently) within Poland. When World War II broke out, the Heinrichs found themselves caught between the Germans and the Russians. Gerd, though firmly anti-Nazi, enlisted in the Luftwaffe (German air force) to avoid execution. When Bernd was five years old, the family fled to West Germany just ahead of the Communist invasion. Several years later they emigrated to the United States.

Throughout all this turmoil, one constant in the family’s life was a love of nature. Gerd Heinrich traveled all over the world gathering animal specimens, some for his own studies and many for natural history museums. In his personal area of expertise, ichneumon wasps, he named over 1,000 new species. Bernd Heinrich began assisting his father at a young age, gathering wasps and taxidermizing small mammals. After the family fled Poland, they lived for several years in a cabin on a West German nature preserve, where Bernd developed a love for the outdoors. Later the Heinrichs settled on a farm in Maine, where Bernd would spend all day out in the woods and meadows, engaged in entomological and zoological activities.

I had previously read A Naturalist at Large: The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich, and I found it rather boring. Though I share Heinrich’s love for birds, I am less than fascinated by the minutiae of his insect research. Overall, however, I found The Snoring Bird quite captivating. I was more enthralled by the first half of the book (mostly about Gerd), because of its World Wars and exotic expeditions, than the second half (mostly about Bernd). Like just about every autobiography these days, there’s an element of “Daddy didn’t love me the way he should.” Bernd working out his father issues doesn’t become overly obtrusive or annoying, however, because the bulk of the book concentrates on the science. The interweaving of science writing and personal memoir provides an enlightening vicarious look into the life of a biologist. One really gets an understanding of the practical work behind the intellectual pursuits. This book also sheds light on science history—biology in particular—by relating how geographical exploration, taxonomy, and description (Gerd’s domains) fell out of favor, to be supplanted by experimentation, DNA analysis, and the formulation of theories on behavioral evolution (Bernd’s world). If you’re a natural scientist, or have ever dreamed of being one, The Snoring Bird is a very stimulating read.  

A Naturalist at Large: The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich

Assorted investigations in natural science

Biologist Bernd Heinrich was born in Germany and emigrated to Maine with his family as a young boy. He is now a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, but he lives in Maine and has a cabin there where he seems to spend a lot of time. Heinrich first came to my attention for his investigations into the intelligence of ravens, but he is primarily an entomologist who has done extensive research on bees. Heinrich’s father Gerd Heinrich was also an esteemed entomologist.

A Naturalist at Large: The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich was published in 2018. It is a collection of articles that Heinrich wrote for various periodicals. Almost all of the selections come from the magazine Natural History, where he appears to have had a regular column. Other than that, there are two articles each from Audubon, Outside, and the New York Times, and one from Orion. The majority of these essays are about observations and studies of nature that Heinrich made on his land in Maine. The rest take place in locations around the world where he has conducted research, such as the Canadian Arctic, the Judaean Desert in Israel, and the Okavango Delta in Botswana. In a typical chapter, Heinrich observes a pattern of animal behavior and comes up with an idea of how and why such a behavior would evolve. He then conducts further observations or experiments to test the validity of his hypothesis. Some examples of his inquiries include how bumblebees regulate their body heat, why water beetles gather in clumps, how the structure of tree branches determines their ability to survive ice storms, how tiny Golden-crowned Kinglets survive icy Maine winters, why there is a predominance of red flowers in the Middle East, and why all plant growth seems to twist in a counterclockwise direction.

Despite the title, I find it hard to believe that these are the best essays of Bernd Heinrich. If they titled the book Assorted Odds and Ends by Bernd Heinrich, however, it probably wouldn’t sell very well. This is basically a collection of magazine articles from mainstream periodicals (not scholarly journals), most of which are not feature articles but rather the sort of short articles and columns you find in the front of most science magazines before you get to the meatier fare.

I have a lot of respect for Heinrich’s work as a naturalist, but I was a bit bored by these writings. He makes the science seem moderately interesting but far from fascinating. Heinrich presents a very nuts-and-bolts approach to natural science: I noticed this. I formed a hypothesis. I tested it thusly. I came to these conclusions. Don’t expect the philosophizing of Thoreau in these Maine Woods. I was anticipating something more along the lines of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, another naturalist who wrote about the wilderness surrounding his cabin (in Wisconsin rather than Maine), but even Leopold’s essays on wildlife conservation policy read more poetically than Heinrich’s articles. What’s missing is any sense of what it feels like to be present in the wild places that Heinrich is describing. These essays read more like they were written in a laboratory. My guess is that Heinrich’s long-form books are more satisfying than these short essays. His workmanlike prose could benefit from some more room to breathe. I’d like to give his A Year in the Maine Woods a try, to see if there might be a little more Thoreau in him after all.