A YEAR IN THE MAINE WOODS, by Bernd Heinrich, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 258 pages, $22.

J. Henri Fabre, celebrated 19th century naturalist whose vivid reports on the life cycle of insects mesmerized the public, was dubbed “the incomparable observer” by Darwin. Although Heinrich’s style is lacking Fabre’s flair, nevertheless the Argus-eyed Heinrich, a zoologist who teaches at the University of Vermont, proves in his newest book, “A Year in the Maine Woods,” that he too is a persuasive docent.

It is clear to the reader that the author loves the world of nature and derives much pleasure from sharing its secrets. “By profession I’m a naturalist and a scientist, but what I really want to do is to be out in the woods,” he confesses. Suiting the word to the action, he took a year’s leave of absence to retreat to his small acreage in Maine and live in a cabin he had built himself. While there, he conducted a study of ravens and song birds.

It was early June when he departed, accompanied only by a baby raven called Jack. “The route from Burlington, Vermont, to my cabin is about 200 miles long,” he writes. “Our destination is Adams Hill in western Maine. Once the site of a farm, it is now, except for my small clearing, all forest. When I was a boy, I used to come here with my friends … and we’d see brushy fields and woods overtaking the old apple trees.” Awakened the next morning by a symphony of song from rose-breasted grosbeaks and red-eyed vireos, he steps out the door of the cabin and inhales the cool, fragrant air. “Walking on the path, I find tiny violets growing along it…” Eagerly, he hurries to the towering red spruce that is his lookout and climbs the “stairlike branches” to its lofty summit.

The view spread itself out like a green velvet cloak. Close in, near Mount Tumbledown, it rippled across the valley in folds of lighter and darker greens, hinting at secret haunts of deer and moose. A gray button of water, Webb Lake, glinted in the morning light. Beyond, one could see the cone-shaped dome of Mount Blue linked to the White Mountain chain. Below the lookout red spruce was a sheer granite drop that anchored itself near a tarred road coiled like a sleepy snake. Nearby, although invisible from Heinrich’s elevated perch, was a potpourri of villages to which the founding fathers had given such quirky names as China, Madrid, Peru, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Paris.

Heinrich’s first order of business was to build a new outhouse. Other imperatives included clearing trees, cutting and splitting wood for the two stoves that heated his cabin, hauling water, digging a trench for the cabin foundation, dragging in rocks for it, planting a garden, and constructing an aviary for the ravens.

A former competitive distance runner, the author jogged daily to and from the mailbox at the foot of the winding, mountainous road, keeping track of a pair of loons and a family of ravens en route.

He also addressed the knotty problem of how to have ready access to his own private phone and answering machine without sacrificing the peace and quiet of his own cabin, and solved it with the permission of his amused, nearest neighbors. Summoning the installer from the telephone company, Heinrich told him where to install the equipment. “Put it,” he said, “in my neighbors’ outhouse.” The installer went into momentary shock.

Heinrich’s journal entries are as precise as the beat of a metronome. At 8:20 p.m. on June 3 he records that he hears the melody of hermit thrushes (“just coming into stride”); by July 10, one learns, “some of the wild ravens were starting to leave their parents (or vice versa)”; August heralds the ripening of blueberries and the disappearance of butterflies; September brings “stars so brilliant you’d expect them to crackle, and Canada geese flying by in long orderly V-shaped formations … emitting their haunting cries high above the gypsy-colored foliage below; then winter blows in, wearing regal robes of snow and howling windy imprecations.

Heinrich’s book is a veritable arcanum of nature’s secrets. Does an angleworm feel pain as it writhes on the fisherman’s hook? How is it that the indigo bunting, which winters in Central America, learns the star patterns by which it navigates the thousands of miles it flies at night? And what is the method ravens use to loosen their parental bonds? Unlike Socrates, Heinrich not only poses the questions, he answers them as well. And that is the enticing fragrance which hovers over this irresistible wild rose of a book.

Bea Goodrich’s reviews are a monthly feature in the Books & Music section.