migrate tens of thousands of miles just to start the nesting season." - Meaning and context.">
The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy, page: 5, publisher: Harvard University Press, 2010, ISBN: 9780674056497 (404 pages)
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Birds are extraordinary creatures by almost any measure. But they are especially impressive when we are so brash as to compare them to ourselves in their astonishingly diverse ways of becoming parents and of parenting. We need three or four decades to accomplish what birds of many species routinely accomplish in less than a month—court, mate, build a nest, lay from one to about twenty eggs, incubate them, and then feed and protect them to adulthood. In some cases birds also provider their offspring's education. They may have to migrate tens of thousands of miles just to start the nesting season.

— Bernd Heinrich

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Birds are extraordinary creatures by almost any measure. But they are especially impressive when we are so brash as to compare them to ourselves in their astonishingly diverse ways of becoming parents and of parenting. We need three or four decades to accomplish what birds of many species routinely accomplish in less than a month—court, mate, build a nest, lay from one to about twenty eggs, incubate them, and then feed and protect them to adulthood. In some cases birds also provider their offspring's education. They may have to migrate tens of thousands of miles just to start the nesting season." in the context of "The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy, page: 5, publisher: Harvard University Press, 2010, ISBN: 9780674056497 (404 pages)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Bernd Heinrich" (Quotes, The Nesting Season (2010)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Bernd Heinrich

About Bernd Heinrich

Bernd Heinrich, Ph.D (born 19 April 1940) is a professor in the zoology department at the University of Vermont. He has authored books about nature writing, zoology, ecology, and evolution. His father was the ichneumon expert Gerd Heinrich (1896–1984).