Instead they would be talking of ecological destruction and the extinction of even well-known species on a global scale.” Then in only a few more years, the unimaginable would happen: people would stop talking about new species.
In a few short years there would be virtually no new birds to discover, except by new methods of DNA analysis of already collected museum specimens in closely related species. Such older fieldwork was giving away to the beginning of modern biology. “It would be the last of the classic zoological expeditions, the end of a tradition that stretched back over 100 years through the Victorian era, and it encompassed my heroes–Darwin, Wallace, Humboldt, Audubon. The author summarized their 1961 African expedition: The book is also a history of 20th century biology study, a period when the old generation naturalists found the ground underneath disappearing and a new generation emerged, and when wild life changed from abundance to scarcity. Yet the kids grew up like wild trees and birds. Both parents seemed to be too immersed in their own world to care much about the kids. The author did not have a close relationship with his mother. That seemed to be a sort of prerequisite of survival with him.” The eldest daughter, who never forgave her father, commented on her father’s relationship with multiple women: “Anybody who stayed close to Gerd for any length of time had to become very manipulative and sort of twisted. I wonder what the man was like from the daughters or wives’ point of view. Bernd Heinrich tried hard to present his father in a full, multi-colored way. He employed British prisoners at his farm, but also saved the family blacksmith from the Nazi death camp. He served as an army officer (not a Nazi) during World War II, because he felt that was the way to survive. Bernd Heinrich’s father, Gerd Heinrich, was a devoted naturalist and ichneumon wasp collector. The Snoring Bird is part memoir, part nature study.
Despite my resistance to him, he instilled in me the mind and the values of a naturalist: to be open to all possibilities, to be a close and careful observer, to discipline my interpretations with facts, and to work hard army passions so that they might bear fruit.” He saved me from being condemned to fifty years of boredom.
I think I even benefited from our arguments–which focused my thoughts and helped me clarify and articulate them. I received advantages despite his intentions. He saw me, as his only son, not as a unique individual but as someone to be valued in terms of whether I would become an extension of him.
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