Nature's year : The seasons of Cape Cod by John Hay
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"Nature's year : The seasons of Cape Cod" by John Hay is a collection of nature essays written in the mid-20th century. Through month-by-month observations on Cape Cod, the work blends close natural history with reflective meditation on weather, wildlife, and the uneasy overlap between human bustle and the living shore. Expect vivid portraits of birds, insects, tides, and woods as the seasons turn, with themes of migration, adaptation, and attention. The
opening of this work follows July through late October as the narrator arrives amid summer traffic and tragedy, then retreats to a hilltop home to attune himself to the Cape’s microclimates and small lives—from a wood peewee’s hunting and periwinkles on tidal rocks to a moon snail’s drill and an afternoon under sail. August dwells on insect abundance and night music (including the temperature-telling snowy tree cricket), a companionable walk with an oven bird, and a wind-swept visit to Crow Pasture where a crippled gull and vigilant terns frame lessons in necessity. Detailed scenes at Paine’s Creek and Monomoy show young terns learning to fish and gather for migration, alongside shorebirds busy on the flats, while September’s clear winds, alewife fry, and dispersing fledglings replace the departing tourists. October turns inward to questions of home and navigation, a venerable box turtle, first frosts, teaching children on a shore ramble, and the season’s colors—mushrooms, Indian pipes, and reddening oaks—before colder winds, squirrels, and shrews signal the harsher change ahead. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Hay, John, 1915-2011 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Grose, David, 1922-2016 |
| LoC No. | 61008166 |
| Title | Nature's year : The seasons of Cape Cod |
| Original Publication | Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961. |
| Credits | Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 77.7 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | QH: Science: Natural history |
| Subject | Natural history -- Outdoor books |
| Subject | Natural history -- Massachusetts -- Cape Cod |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 76613 |
| ISBN (HTML) | 979-8-238-76613-3 |
| Release Date | Aug 1, 2025 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 490 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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