Home bird: A person who likes to stay at home.For Laura Wainwright that home is Martha's Vineyard. Her essays celebrate the simple but profound pleasures that can be found by listening carefully to the voices of the natural world and the rhythms of each season. Walk with her to find lady's slippers or painted turtles in springtime. Join her in the barn across the road on a cold afternoon. Follow her as she cuts watercress, gathers scallops, casts for striped bass — and then prepares some of her favorite recipes.With nuanced observations of everyday details, Wain- wright shows how connecting to the complexity and beauty of the natural world can ground us and help us uncover deeper meaning in our lives.— Includes Eight Recipes — Each of the essays in the book give the sense of having been written down at the end of the individual days they describe. Little moments predominate, like a swim at a freshwater inland pond on a hot summer's day when the rest of the island is at the beach. It is such contemplative precision that gives Home Bird its charm. The striking intimacy of Home Bird is present throughout. Writing about looking at the stars on a late-fall night, Ms. Wainwright almost confesses, 'I love our watery planet so fiercely that I have to look away.' --East Hampton Star When Ms. Wainwright describes a scene, animal, or flower, she does so with such detail, beauty, and such colors and sounds. Reading her essays, one is transported to the walk at Wompesket, harvesting raspberries at Mermaid Farm, or lingering at Cary Luckey's estate sale. They are meditations on the simple everyday beauty to be found everywhere you look, as well as field guide explanations of birds' seasonal patterns or explanations on the rarity of sea glass (and with a few recipes thrown in, too). --Vineyard Gazette When Ms. Wainwright describes a scene, animal, or flower, she does so with such detail, beauty, and such colors and sounds. Reading her essays, one is transported to the walk at Wompesket, harvesting raspberries at Mermaid Farm, or lingering at Cary Luckey's estate sale. They are meditations on the simple everyday beauty to be found everywhere you look, as well as field guide explanations of birds' seasonal patterns or explanations on the rarity of sea glass (and with a few recipes thrown in, too). --Vineyard Gazette Summer: Wet bathing suits are back on the line, and we shower outside amid pale pink roses that tangle in my hair. We brush by the fireplace in our rush to get outside, barely recalling its central place in our lives these past six months. Summer solstice is just two days away, and now we're eating barefoot on the porch and listening to screen doors slap.Autumn: As soon as the family scallop season opens in Chilmark on October 1, my husband digs in the garage for his wooden culling board and the scallop drags I gave him one year for Christmas. He hoses off a pair of wire baskets, loads everything into his truck, and we head for Menemsha harbor where he keeps his boat. We're going scalloping.Winter: I find what particularly grounds me during these cold, short days are animals, especially cows. When I lean into the sturdiness of their big flanks and feel the warmth of their breath, I am fortified. The tender way they lick their lanky calves always makes me smile.Spring: Walking silently amid wild laurel and fragrant black locust, I try to figure out what it is about the sight of a painted turtle that fills me with happiness. Is it the funny way they maneuver into the water so still and then so quick? The satisfying plop when they hit the water? Or is it simply the thrill of a moment's connection with such an ancient animal? LAURA WAINWRIGHT, a graduate of Yale University, was a teacher and children's librarian for many years before becoming a writer. Currently she is working on a Masters of Fine Arts at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Her essays have appeared regularly in The Martha's Vineyard Times. She lives in Lambert's Cove on Martha's Vineyard with her husband, Whit Griswold; they have two grown children. This is her first book.