The homing instinct : meaning & mystery in animal migration
(Book)

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Published
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Format
Book
Physical Desc
xv, 352 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Status
Oliver La Farge - Adult
591.568 Hei
1 available

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LocationCall NumberStatus
Oliver La Farge - Adult591.568 HeiOn Shelf

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Published
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Language
English

Notes

Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description
Acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has returned every year since boyhood to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. What is the biology in humans of this deep in the bones pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing? Heinrich explores the fascinating science chipping away at the mysteries of animal migration: how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures, from fish to insects to amphibians, to pinpoint their home if they are displaced from it; and how the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. Most movingly, Heinrich chronicles the spring return of a pair of sandhill cranes to their home pond in the Alaska tundra. With his trademark "marvelous, mind altering" prose (Los Angeles Times), he portrays the unmistakable signs of deep psychological emotion in the newly arrived birds, and reminds us that to discount our own emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself.

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