A YEAR IN THE MAINE WOODS ...

A YEAR IN THE MAINE WOODS by Bernd Heinrich (Addison Wesley: $13.; 258 pp., illustrated). A nature writer and professor of biology, Bernd Heinrich recounts a year he spent alone in a cabin in rural Maine, studying ravens. His knowledge and heightened powers of observation enable him to explain what he sees, from squirrel behavior to maple seedlings. His love of the forest in its ever-shifting beauty distinguishes Heinrich’s book from touchy-feely New Age paeans to the wilderness. An astute observer of the microscopic and the macroscopic, he concludes, “These are my favorite haunts, because this is home, where the subtle matters, and the spectacular distracts.” A National Book Award nominee.