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The Seafarers

Journey Among Birds

By: Stephen Rutt

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eBook | 23 May 2019

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256 Pages

eBook

RRP $13.99

$12.99

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‘A beautifully illuminating portrait of lives lived largely on the wing and at sea’ - Julian Hoffman, author of Irreplaceable and The Small Heart of Things

The British Isles are remarkable for their extraordinary seabird life: spectacular gatherings of charismatic Arctic terns, elegant fulmars and stoic eiders, to name just a few.

In 2015, Stephen Rutt escaped his hectic, anxiety-inducing life in London for the bird observatory on North Ronaldsay, the most northerly of the Orkney Islands. In thrall to these windswept havens and the people and birds that inhabit them, he began a journey to the edges of Britain. From Shetland, to the Farnes of Northumberland, down to the Welsh islands off the Pembrokeshire coast, he explores the part seabirds have played in our history and what they continue to mean to Britain today.

The Seafarers is the story of those travels: a love letter, written from the rocks and the edges, for the salt-stained, isolated and ever-changing lives of seabirds. It reveals what it feels like to be immersed in a completely wild landscape, examining the allure of the remote in an over-crowded world.

About the Author

Stephen Rutt is a birder, naturalist, freelance feature writer and book reviewer whose work has appeared in EarthLines Magazine, Zoomorphic, The Harrier, Surfbirds, BirdGuides and the East Anglian Daily Times. In 2016 he escaped his hectic, anxiety-inducing life in London to spend seven months at the bird observatory on North Ronaldsay, the most northerly island in the Orkney archipelago, where this book was born. He currently lives in Dumfries.

Industry Reviews

"The writing lures you in, making you feel that you too might benefit from venturing out in inclement weather, just on the off-chance of seeing something remarkable on the wing to lift your spirits"
The National

"An evocative book ... I could taste the salt on my lips and smell the perfume of storm petrels. The Seafarers is a pelagic poem about the birds that exist at the coastal edges of our islands and consciousness. The stories of these hardy birds entwine seamlessly with Stephen Rutt's personal journey to form a narrative as natural and flowing as the passage of shearwater along the face of Atlantic rollers"
Jon Dunn, author of Orchid Summer

"An arrestingly vivid turn of phrase... An accomplished debut from an exciting new voice in Nature writing."
The Countryman Magazine

"5*... One of those great joys of a book ... I look forward to reading the next book from this author, although I acknowledge that he has set his own bar very high"
Tonto Williams Electronic Scrapbook