The Homing Instinct: Meaning & Mystery in Animal Migration

Readers of this, or any of Heinrich's previous books (Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death), will recognize his habits of mind—observing, questioning, measuring, wondering, drawing, problem solving—the supply of applicable gerunds nearly runs out. Here the author explores homing and home building, working the theme across the animal spectrum (with a side trip into the vegetal world of chestnut trees). Heinrich (emeritus, biology, Univ. of Vermont) divides his latest work into three broad sections: the first, perhaps most familiar to readers, covers homing, where the wonders of some migratory animals' navigational prowess is examined; the second investigates the physical structures in which some beasts dwell; and, in a richly allusive third part, where Heinrich's own return home frames the narrative, he considers how all of this relates to human biology and culture. Much of the author's inquiry occurs locally, in the Maine woods, but the study of some extraordinary homemakers—frogs, sociable weaver birds, sandhill cranes—takes him to far-flung Suriname, the Kalahari, and Alaska.