Macdonald combines some of her best loved essays with new pieces. Her topics range 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, she writes about the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. -- adapted from jacket;"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 through the Tribute of Light, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, and seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. By one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us"--;Introduction -- Nests -- Nothing Like a Pig -- Inspector Calls -- Field Guides -- Tekels Park -- High-Rise -- The Human Flock -- The Student's Tale -- Ants -- Symptomatic -- Sex, Death, Mushrooms -- Winter Woods -- Eclipse -- In Her Orbit -- Hares -- Lost, But Catching Up -- Swan Upping -- Nestboxes -- Deer in the Headlights -- The Falcon and the Tower -- Vesper Flights -- In Spight of Prisons -- Sun Birds and Cashmere Spheres -- The Observatory -- Wicken -- Storm -- Murmurations -- A Cuckoo in the House -- The Arrow-Stork -- Ashes -- A Handful of Corn -- Berries -- Cherry Stones -- Birds, Tabled -- Hiding -- Eulogy -- Rescue -- Goats -- Dispatches from the Valleys -- The Numinous Ordinary -- What Animals Taught Me.