Helen Macdonald

"In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing songbirds from the Empire State Building as they migrate...

An award-winning best-seller from the UK recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery. "As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White's struggle...

"Cassiano dal Pozzo, (1588-1657) now celebrated as one of the most important art patrons in Italy of the seventeenth century, commissioned a number of exquisite studies of birds as part of his famous "Paper Museum." In 1622 the lawyer and ornithologist Giovanni Pietro Olina used these drawings, which are now kept in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, as the basis for the illustrations in his Uccelliera. Pasta for Nightingales combines Cassiano's...

"Devoted readers of H Is for Hawk will find Macdonald's gift for stunning language, patient curiosity, and expansive wisdom on full display in her poems."-Publishers Weekly From the naturalist and author of the New York Times bestseller H is for Hawk, which appeared on more than twenty-five Best Books of the Year lists, Shaler's Fish is a collection of poetry that roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet's universe, seamlessly fusing...