Customer Reviews

The Birds of Heaven

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If you've read any of Matthiessen's non fiction you'll know that when he's passionate about a subject he has the ability to bring feelings alive with his poetic and vivid command of language. Tie that in with his inclination to be a naturally introspective writer - literally seeking inner truths through nature - and you've got the threads that are woven together here to make THE BIRDS OF HEAVEN a beautifully written book. In describing a glimpse of three Japanese cranes on a misty early evening on the snow covered banks of a river, Matthiessen is at his evocative best. "Sun silvered creatures, moving gracefully without haste and yet swiftly in the black diamond shimmer of the Muri River - a hallucinatory vision, a revelation, although what is revealed beyond this silver moment of my life I do not know."

While Matthiessen is poetic and romantic as a nature writer he is a blunt and critical social commentator. Our species comes in for some stick. We neither stack up well in creation - look at the beauty of an African Crowned crane, the "red-black-and-white head crowned by a spray of elongated feathers on the nape, like spun gold in the bright sun...how wonderful it seems that even the boldest colors of creation are never garish or mismatched, as they are so often in the work of man." Nor do we do so well with what we create - China's Three Gorges Dam will destroy some pristine crane wintering lands and is, according to Matthiessen, "a grand folly of enormous cost." Worse still is that we are such a self destructive species. The dam, he goes on to say, will also cause "social and environmental ruin" in this part of China.

Poignancy, yes, even sorrow at the passing of so many of the last wild and unspoilt areas of the planet, but sentimentality, wistfullness, hopelessness, and inaction are not words that are in this author's vocabulary. Indeed the fact that cranes are the central focus here is cause for cautious optimism. Cranes have always been a vibrant part of our cultural history and remain evocative symbols of our spiritual and creative imagination and are seen as omens of good luck and longevity in many countries.

The fifteen species of cranes (eleven of which are endangered or threatened) have lessons to teach mankind. Matthiessen's recounting of the sectarian squabbling that took place at an international gathering of crane conservationists is illustrative. While economics, politics, and nationality remain common dividing factors among the human participants, more than half of the species of cranes are content to make the Amur River basin in central Asia their common gathering ground.

A powerful book for Matthiessen's writing, the beautiful paintings and illustrations offered in support, and the stories of the cranes themselves - Saurus, Crowned Crane, Brolga, Siberian and the rare Whooping and Japanese Cranes - two of the most endangered species that Matthiessen says are "heraldic emblems of the purity of water, earth, and air that is being lost." We need to conserve, appreciate, and learn from these birds of heaven, and heed the "horn notes of their voices, [that] like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth."

The readers of "The Birds of Heaven" should be prepared for joy, awe, geographic and naturalist education, but also sadness,fear and disgust. Matthiessen travels the world in search of the wild cranes. He is not just an observor, he is part of the effort to study and save these amazing birds. Robert Bateman's drawings are beautiful and serve as references as you read.

Peter Matthiessen travels with George Archibald, from the International Crane Foundation, through Asia revisiting places where cranes were previously abundant. They share the wonder of the many sightings of cranes. Yet Dr. Archibald is quoted as saying,"What a species we are!" after "being astonished anew by the destructive and murderous proclivities of man".

I learned so much from this book and recommend it to those who are not afraid to see the world as it is.

Of Peter Matthiessen's non-fiction I have previously read only The Snow Leopard, but I have also enjoyed a collection of short stories called On the River Styx. Mr. Matthiessen's authorial voice is very prickly in Birds of Heaven, much more cranky than I remember it in The Snow Leopard, which was written in the wake of the death of his wife from cancer. The Snow Leopard was permeated with sadness and longing. Birds of Heaven is permeated with anger and impatience.

The book is arranged geographically. Beginning in Siberia, Mr. Matthiessen takes through Asia to Australia and then on to Africa and Europe and finally to North America. There are no cranes in South America (or Antarctica).

The author is at his best when he is combining his wry observations of the people and places around him with an enthusiastic and well-informed account of the natural history of a region. I felt that he was less successful when he lets his righteous indignation get the better of him and begins to make snide comments about the absence of a love of the natural world in Chinese society, the wrong-headedness of various bureaucrats and the corruption of local officials.

It is not as if I disagreed with his point of view, but I knew that I already shared it before I even picked up the book. I can't imagine anyone who had any doubts about the importance of cranes as sensitive indicators of the general health of the environment being won over to the crane's side by this hectoring, doctrinaire authorial voice. But then, perhaps this books is really just an extended love letter to the cranes and to the environment in general. As such, it succeeds wonderfully.

Peter Matthiessen includes stories of native people on all the continents that harbor cranes in _The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes_ (North Point Press). He recounts some encounters with humans ("craniacs") who are trying to save the cranes, which are in trouble everywhere, but most of the extensive travels described in this book can only report trouble. If we do not, however, learn what the crane has to tell us, it will be despite Matthiessen's efforts, for in him, cranes have a lucid and compelling advocate.He has gone to exotic locales wherever cranes go. There are plenty of common denominators wherever he travels. Cranes, like so many other forms of wildlife, are hunted, trapped to sell as exotic specimens, and poisoned as agricultural pests. Cranes need wetlands in which to feed, and humans need wetlands to serve as repositories for waste and to be built over to make more space for more humans. It is clear everywhere that Matthiessen goes that humans are winning, and therefore losing.

He has produced an unforgettably bleak picture of ecological matters in China, and an optimistic account of our own country's efforts in getting whooping cranes started again. That we don't know what we are doing in dealing with the cranes is shown in a paradoxically happy outcome for them in Korea. Wars are, as the posters used to declare, harmful to children and other living things, and the Korean War was disastrous for humans and for cranes. There is now a Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, just a couple of miles wide but running from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea. Human habitation is forbidden in the area, and farming is very limited. Matthiessen is thus able to visit the DMZ's boundary, accompanied by armed soldiers. ("One may visit a North Korean museum that reveals American atrocities, but we decline this educational opportunity, electing to go birdwatching instead.") He thus gets to watch cranes in the "most fiercely protected wildlife sanctuary on earth... an accidental paradise for cranes." Woe to the cranes if peace breaks out.

This volume includes paintings and drawings of cranes by Robert Bateman, lovely renderings that are more compelling than the usual field guide renditions. They complement Matthiessen's fine text. Cranes are long lived, and they often mate for life. Their windpipes are modified like French horns to produce eloquent and distinctive calls. Their size and their pugnacity, for they are protective birds and dangerous to handle, should make us respect them as fellow-citizens of the planet. There is no need to invoke anthropomorphism; there is a spiritual bond between humans and these animals which Matthiessen has movingly demonstrated. He knows, however, that "the time is past when large rare creatures can recover their numbers without man's strenuous intervention," and despite his romantic optimism, his stories show we are strenuously bent on something else entirely.

I first read Peter Matthiessen in the 1970s: "The Snow Leopard", and was so moved by his writing that I began to read everything I could find that he authored. I have never been disappointed. "The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes" is, like his other books scholarly and absolutely sings with his love of the subject. And the included art is breathtaking. With International Crane Foundation as well as other authorities on wildlife conservation, Matthiessen has written another book that will transport the reader to numerous countries, under numerous skies to see and hear the ancient bugling of the birds of heaven.

The most striking feature of this book is the color plates, which might make the book a nice gift for a birdlover. This ornithological study works on at least 2 levels:1)it is a detailed study of the current knowledge of 15 species of cranes, most of which are endangered (The Sandhill crane of the US is an exception), efforts for preservation of the species, and ornithological details. To give the briefest example, some of the cranes are migratory,while others are not. Some migrate long distances, as does the crane that nests in Northern Asia and winters in India. The Sandhill crane, of North America, has the longest migration. Most produce only one egg per season, take more than one year to mature (unlike geese), and are subject to predation;the book enumerates the numerous efforts at preservation worldwide, which include using an airplane as an imprinted mother-figure, just like in the film "Fly Away Home." Also there are preservation societies in many countries, including Cornell U. and in Wisconsin in America. 2) It also works as an historical and geographical travel guide to many remote areas of the world, including China, Mongolia, Siberia, Southern and Southeast Asia,Japan, Korea (where cranes inhabit the demilitarized zone) , Australia, England, Africa, and America-- all continents except South America. These cultures are alien in terms of religion, culture,politics and geography at least to me so reading about them presents a formidable challenge. The book is lavishly illustrated with pictures of these beautiful and diverse birds.

Peter Matthiessen, for those unfamiliar with his writing, is a keen observer; the natural talent for a writer. His difference, and as far as I know it if a fairly uncommon one, is his ability to make little of what one would suppose to be the difficult borders between fiction and non-fiction. You can read Far Tortuga or Killing Mr Watson as easily as Snow Leopard, often losing any sense of balance between what is real and what is spirited from the real. In both he writes highly evocative prose that twists, often in a surreal fashion, from the everyday into careful conclusions of what is the higher ground for the protagonist, in the case of fiction, and for the observer in the naturalist elegies. I have found the same dialectic in both. When I read the review of Birds of Heaven in the NYRB I was excited with the prospect of another journey with Mr Matthieseen, even though I had extant ones still to make with The Spirit of Crazy Horse, Wildlife in North America (which the NYR reviewer called the "classic" study) and others. ... this book will also merit classic status, as a definitive study of current crane populations in Asia and Japan that is approachable by the general reader. I had little knowledge of cranes as a species, but nearing the end of the book, thanks in part to the wonderful color illustrations and drawings, I feel enriched just for the cursory knowledge I have gained of these magnificent birds. And I have been able to travel as part of Mr. Matthiessen's party, taken in by the detail of each landform and each river, the anecdotal descriptions of the people which, with his pen, rise to something more akin to actually being there and finally, to the heart of those who seek preservation of the little bit of wildness that is left to us as a planet.

...

_The Birds of Heaven_ by Peter Matthiessen is a well-written and informative account of the fifteen living species of crane. Matthiessen chronicled in the book his years of experience with these birds, traveling to Russia, China, Mongolia (where six species have been recorded), India, Bhutan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Africa, England (where the Eurasian or common crane, extinct there since 1653, is at last a breeding species once more), Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Florida to study and write about the various species. Matthiessen's superb writing is accompanied by truly excellent artwork by artist Robert Bateman, who produced a number of black and white drawings and color paintings for the book.

Matthiessen did an excellent job of covering the biology of cranes in general and of each species individually. The crane family (Gruidae) we learn is found on every continent except South America and Antarctica and is comprised of three genera, _Grus_ (to which all but five of the living species belong to and a group primarily found in Eurasia), _Anthropoides_ (which includes the demoiselle crane as well as the blue crane of South Africa, which may be descended from it; Matthiessen discussed many theories of crane evolution), and _Balearica_ (which includes two African species, the black crowned and gray crowned). Though sometimes called herons in some parts of the world (or more often herons are referred to as cranes), cranes differ from herons in that cranes fly with neck outstretched rather than curved back over the shoulder (they differ from storks in that storks display broad tails, which the cranes lack).

The several species of crane have subtly different breeding habitat and food preferences; for instance in the Amur Basin the white-naped crane probes for tubers while the red crowned crane hunts small animals and picks at vegetation. Not all cranes are restricted to wetlands; while for example all three of the rare white cranes are found only in marshes, the more widespread and abundant demoiselle, Eurasian, and sandhill cranes are generalized feeders able to succeed in a variety of terrains, with the demoiselle primarily an upland feeder.

Some cranes have rather unusual adaptations. Several species are "diggers" - feeding primarily on mud-buried tubers - and these species (the white-naped, sarus, brolga, Siberian, and wattled cranes) have naked, non-feathered skin on their head down to the bill, which is an adaptation analogous to the naked head and neck of vultures. The brolga crane, which is more often found in salt marshes than other species, has evolved specialized salt glands near the eyes through which it can secrete concentrated salts. Feather painting is also covered; some species daub their feathers with wet vegetation or mud during nesting season for camouflage.

The role of cranes in myth and history is also discussed. The word crane comes from the old German word "Cranuh," which like the genus name _Grus_ is a rendition of the bird's cry. The Yakuts people of Siberia revered the Siberian crane as a symbol of their various clans, a uniting symbol for their people. The sarus crane of India (at nearly six feet tall the tallest flying bird on earth) has been for centuries revered as a holy messenger of Vishnu, a Hindu deity, a reverence that has protected this crane from hunting (similarly a Buddhist reverence for life in general and often cranes in particular has helped kept cranes safe in such places as Bhutan). The red-crowned crane (or in Japanese "tancho;" the heaviest flying bird on earth) was revered as a messenger of death and symbol of eternal life to the Ainu and portrayed in Japanese robes, wedding kimonos, screens, scrolls, and other items for centuries. Revered also in Korea as "turumi," a companion to sages, scholars, and musicians, in both nations it was also regrettably hunted and eaten. More recently the peace symbol of the 1960s was originally a Hopi Indian sign derived from the footprint of a crane.

One thing that surprised me was that some crane discoveries were made fairly recently. The whooping crane's breeding ground was found after nine years of searching in 1954. A large, breeding, unknown (though known to Aborigines) population of sarus cranes was discovered in 1961 in Australia. A non-migratory population of red-crowned cranes on Hokkaido wasn't confirmed until 1972. The breeding ground of the central Siberian population of the Siberian crane wasn't found until 1978. The black-necked or Tibetan crane was as late as 1987 thought to be rapidly vanishing, the second most endangered crane on earth, but surveys in the early 1990s in Tibet and Bhutan pegged the species at a much healthier count of 5,500 birds, showing that early estimates were way off.

Issues of crane conservation are well covered, with Matthiessen chronicling the dire straits faced by many of the species, the heroic efforts made by some to save them, and even their role as "umbrella species;" that when their habitats are preserved many other plants and animals benefit. The Amur Basin of Russia for instance - a vital crane habitat - is being threatened by massive deforestation, agricultural runoff, pollution from mining, and proposed dams. Attempts by such agencies as the International Crane Foundation to broker deals between those nations that share the Amur and its products - Russia, South Korea, China, and Japan - has been stymied by mutual mistrust (extending to ridiculous extremes; Chinese officials refusing for instance to refer to the red-crowned crane as the Japanese or Manchurian crane, both frequently used common names). Some successes exist; the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Reserve near Bharatpur, India, established to preserve wintering Siberian cranes is now also home to 364 bird species as well as pythons, nilgai antelope, and sambar deer (though the park is still threatened by the crush of humanity in crowded India).

In addition to being an excellent book on the history and natural history of cranes it is also a wonderful travel book, the author doing a great job of describing what it is like to travel in such exotic places as Bhutan and Mongolia.

The Birds of Heaven is an unusual mix of natural history, travel, personal reflections, and tough lessons in the realities of international cooperation (or lack thereof) in conservation. It is thoroughly engaging, and also has beautiful illustrations and photographs. Everyone who loves the outdoors--not just crane fanatics--should own a copy of this book.

Schiller's Ibykus said to 'his' cranes: We come from afar and beg for a hospitable roof. He travels 'with' cranes in the same sense as author Peter Matthiessen: we can look for them and we can meet them accidentally, but we can hardly travel with them,though the plight of Homo may not differ much from that of Grus, as far as the degradation of natural habitats is concerned. The cranes are in double trouble: as migratory birds, they are facing reduction in breeding grounds as well as in wintering grounds. In Schiller's poem, the itinerant musician Ibykus sees the cranes as his friends.

If one has truly understood a crane - or a leaf or a cloud or a frog - one has understood everything.
That's the kind of didactic statement that Peter Matthiessen likes to make. There is some truth in it, but as in all categorical declarations like this one, once you carry it too far, it becomes nonsense. (Which is the fate of all radicalisms, by the way.)

I bought this book recently for a variety of reasons.
I read Matthiessen's marvelous Snow Leopard book about his Himalayan excursions, and apart from the fact that I forgot it completely, I remember that I absolutely loved it.
So I thought: why not more of this kind? Also I thought: quite a few of my ama-zoo pals are bird-people, why not try and join the crowd? I am sure I could be a bird man too, if I didn't have the bad luck to live in a big city, since a long time. And then, the book is a travel book, and much of it is in and around China. Quite obligatory for me.
Apart from that, the crane as Schiller's pet and as Lufthansa's logo animal is a natural subject for me.

So where does that take me? To a beautiful book with lovely illustrations of cranes, by Robert Bateman. To a book of travels to the cranes in their natural habitats, worldwide. We go to the Amur region, where Russia and China have been uncomfortable neighbors. To Mongolia, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bhutan, the Yangtze basin, Hokkaido...

The core message of the book is the plight of the crane: the destruction and degradation of its natural habitat by expanded human settlement, by drainage of wetlands, logging, mining, poisoning of rivers and lakes, dams, power lines, barbed wire fences.... The book wraps this message in a travelogue, which gives us political/historical backgrounds together with the social/economical reasons for the degradation. And it tells us about cranes' lives and about conservation efforts.

But the book tries to do too many things, and in the end, only the illustrations are entirely satisfactory! The travels are partly somewhat flat and unoriginal. The analysis of habitat problems remains superficial. The political chapters about the problems in East Asia are unoriginal.

And some pedantic observations on the edition: the maps are too small! They look great, but they would need a coffee table size book to be readable.
And the irritating small errors of the writer: Mongolia fled into Soviet arms in 1911? (That's the kind of error that can creep in by careless editing; if he says that the fall of the monarchy in China in 1911 caused such instability in China over decades, that the Outer Mongolia region of China separated and became a practical protectorate of the Soviets later, as the nominally independant country Mongolia, then I withdraw my complaint.)
China's Black Dragon Province Heilongjian is identical with `Manchuria', the former Japanese puppet state? Only one third true.
The last night of Chinese New Year is the last night of the previous year? Is he serious? Of course the last night before the Chinese New Year is the last night of the last year. Isn't that obvious?
These little things mean little, but they reduce my enjoyment.

And the small irritations of political valuation, like on the Chinese settlement of Mongolia and Manchuria: what is wrong with that? After all, both tribes subjugated China and ruled it for substantial times, in fact they integrated themselves into China.
Or, similarly: trouble between Muslims and Hindus in India is caused by British colonialism? That is overstating the case, I think.

Enough of the complaints. The strong side of the book, apart from the gorgeous paintings and drawings, is the adventure of crane sighting. Let's say 4 stars and a half.
Which leads me to think: have I ever seen a crane? Or only herons and ibises and storks? Or only in zoos? I wish I knew.
(How is the man's fiction, by the way?)