0 of 5
0 ratings
rated!
rated!
list price: $34.95
edition:Hardcover
category: Nature
published: Oct 1996
ISBN:9780774805759
publisher: UBC Press

The Private Eye

Observing Snow Geese

by Mary Burns

tagged: birdwatching guides
Description

In The Private Eye we learn about snow geese through the eyes of Native people, scientists, artists, hunters, and farmers. Yup'ik Eskimo Charles Hunt harvests snow geese along the Yukon River delta each fall, continuing a subsistence way of life that has existed for millennia. Russian, Canadian, and U.S. scientists track the movements of the geese each spring and fall, banding, sexing, counting, and precisely monitoring the activities of these beautiful birds. Robert Bateman provides an artist's view of nature and relates how his curiosity led him to join a camp set up at a remote nesting site.

Mary Burns also talks to hunters, joining a party of them as they wait for their snow geese decoys to lure the real thing into a Westham Island field in the Fraser delta. As well, Burns travels around the Skagit River delta during a population survey and meets a dairy farmer who describes both the wild flocks that converge on his fields each spring and the snow geese he raises in pens.

The Private Eye suggests that by acknowledging our many and varied connections with the natural world, we will have a better understanding of the human place in it.

About the Author

Mary Burns

Contributor Notes

Mary Burns is the author of two story collections, Suburbs of the Arctic Circle and Shinny's Girls, a trilogy of novellas, Centre/Center, and several radio plays. She teaches in the Language, Literature and Performing Arts department of Douglas College and in the Writing and Publishing Program of Simon Fraser University.

Editorial Reviews

... the passionate story of her involvement with these geese who summer in the remote north of Siberia and winter on the deltas of the Fraser and Skagit rivers, as well as a strong sense of the geese within their environment, and a never-diminished sense of involvement....A wonderful read. (4 stars)

— The Milestones Review, Books for the Interior, Fall/Winter

an interesting, sometimes poetic, factual narrative combined with an introduction to some of the natural history of a local species....occasionally Snow Goose behaviour is described in sufficient detail for me to recognize similarities with Konrad Lorenz’s greylag geese in the classic Here am I. Where are You?

— Discovery, Dec. 1997, Vol. 26, No.4
X
Contacting facebook
Please wait...