One wild bird at a time : portraits of individual lives

**The acclaimed scientist's encounters with individual wild birds, yielding "marvelous, mind-altering" (__Los Angeles Times__) insights and discoveries** In his modern classics __One Man's Owl__ and __Mind of the Raven,__ Bernd Heinrich has written memorably about his relationships with wild ravens and a great horned owl. In __One Wild Bird at a Time,__ Heinrich returns to his great love: close, day-to-day observations of __individual__ wild birds. There are countless books on bird behavior, but, writes Heinrich, "some of the most amazing bird behaviors fall below the radar of what most birds do in aggregate." Heinrich's "passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science" (__New York Times__) lead to fascinating questions — and sometimes startling discoveries. A great crested flycatcher bringing food to the young acts surreptitiously and is attacked by the mate. Why? A pair of Northern flickers hammering their nest-hole into... In One Wild Bird at a Time, Heinrich returns to his great love: close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds. Heinrich's observations lead to fascinating questions - and sometimes startling discoveries. A great crested flycatcher bringing food to the young acts surreptitiously and is attacked by the mate. Why? A pair of Northern flickers hammering their nest-hole into the side of Heinrich's cabin delivers the opportunity to observe the feeding competition between siblings, and to make a related discovery about nest-cleaning. One of a clutch of redstart warbler babies fledges out of the nest from twenty feet above the ground, and lands on the grass below. It can't fly. What will happen next?