Birds by the Shore

Penguin Books, 2019 - Audiobook

For three years, Jennifer Ackerman lived in the small coastal town of Lewes, Delaware, in the sort of blue-water, white-sand landscape that draws summer crowds up and down the eastern seaboard. Birds by the Shore is a book about discovering the natural life at the ocean’s edge: the habits of shorebirds and seabirds, the movement of sand and water, the wealth of creatures that survive amid storm and surf. Against this landscape’s rhythms, Ackerman revisits her own history—her mother’s death, her father’s health scare, and her hopes to have children of her own. With a quite passion and friendly, generous intelligence, Birds by the Shore explores the way that landscape shapes our thoughts and perceptions and shows that home ground is often where we feel the deepest response to the planet.

• “Arresting and provocative… A joy to read.” —The Washington Post

• “The alchemy of art with solid science.” — Edward Hoagland

• “Serene and loving, Ackerman’s deeply personal take on the world around her constitutes nature writing at its best.”
  — The Philadelphia Inquirer

• “In the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea or William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers, a book about life on and off the shore… a joy to read. The writing is elegant and the book is full of lovely images.” — The Washington Post

• “Ackerman, blessed with a naturalist’s eye for detail and a poet’s soul, beautifully captures the ebb and flow of life at the edge of marsh, land, and sea.” — People

• “Ackerman writes enchantingly of an environment we have all experienced, but perhaps have never paused to ‘see.’ Through her eyes and her remarkable skills of description , we share a world as complex and exciting as the unfathomable depths of the ocean.” — The Baltimore Sun