Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin's Lost Notebooks

Charles Darwin was a bumbling neophyte naturalist when he boarded the Beagle in 1831. Through the five years that followed, as the ship hugged the coastline of South America, Darwin found himself wading through waist-deep mud, climbing towerlike trees in the rain forest, and scaling craggy Patagonian cliffs as he closely observed the relationship between the wild creatures he stalked and the astonishing, utterly unfamiliar landscapes where he found them. At the end of these adventures, Darwin emerged a philosophical naturalist who could draw scientific truths from the simple stories contained in the creatures he encountered. What happened to Darwin? Thats the question Lyanda Lynn Haupt engagingly explores in a narrative that puts us inside the young Darwins shoesand brings us nose to nose with dung beetles, ostriches, and all forms of native wildlife. By focusing mostly on the birds Darwin observed, and by brilliantly mining his lesser-known writingsdiaries, correspondence, ornithological journals, unruly little pocket notebooksHaupt illuminates the process of discovery that shaped Darwins vision. Her book not only chronicles Darwins transformation from uncertain amateur to genius but reminds us how and why, in our own world as well as Darwins, attention to small things can make a big difference.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont, and as a seabird researcher for the Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific. She is the author of Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent and Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds (winner of the 2002 Washington State Book Award).

Her writing has appeared in Image, Open Spaces, Wild Earth, Conservation Biology Journal, Birdwatcher's Digest, and the Prairie Naturalist. She lives in West Seattle with her husband and daughter.