Eavesdropping on Animals

September 1, 2024
As a guide and naturalist at Yellowstone, Bumann has first-hand experience with animal behavior. In this book he teaches the reader how to become attuned to wildlife no matter where they are, whether in the city or country, in the woods or outside their home. There are wild animals everywhere and they should be noticed, appreciated, and quietly observed. One way is to just sit in a favorite spot, listen, and watch the birds and other animals in that place. He often equates this to meditation. Bumann offers insights to help readers understand deer, wild turkeys, crows, coyotes, and other wildlife. This includes deciphering their vocalizations, observing their movements, and learning how to respectfully coexist in their natural habitats without disrupting them. Nature journaling or drawing are further ways to keep tabs on what you have observed over time. Attuning ourselves to how animals behave, speak, and interact with others can bring us closer to caring and protecting both the animals and the land they occupy. For those who loved Ed Yong's An Immense World (2022) or books by Peter Wohlleben, this will be another treasured read.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2024
A Yellowstone wildlife ecologist and artist exhorts readers to open up our senses to the outdoors. "Most of us spend our entire lives turning a blind eye and deaf ear toward animal conversations, chalking the chatter up to just more meaningless racket," writes Bumann, decrying for the first of many times the unquiet desperation of our human habits. Point an ear toward the howl of a coyote, he continues, and you might hear--well, just a howl. Fine-tune your ear, and you may hear that the coyote is crying out the coyote word for "wolf," not implausibly in a place like Yellowstone. Bumann's notion that wildlife in conversation is as incessant and universal as human communication is pleasing, and his observation that "the sounds made and the gestures used by animals are anything but random" is well taken. On the other hand, Bumann reminds us that, yes, grasshoppers can hop much higher than humans, but it doesn't add much to the human conversation for Bumann to say, "Who needs Marvel Comics when the nonhumans living in your own house or flowerbed can manage parallel feats?" Bumann's account of experiences in the wild are the best part of the book, as he describes listening for differences in the calls made by prairie dogs, ravens, and owls; it's good to learn that if you see butterflies atop a carcass or alongside a puddle, they're likely to be male, since males "need to replenish essential salts, namely sodium, throughout the breeding season." His occasional notes on self-guided nature study--find a place to visit regularly, make notes in a journal, grow a wild garden, and so forth--are the stuff of a thousand blog posts, though, tending to detract from his larger narrative on animal behavior. A well meaning if sometimes preachy appreciation of the lessons of nature.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.