-
Vesper Flights
- Narrated by: Helen Macdonald
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Categories: Science & Engineering, Science
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $28.35
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
Owls of the Eastern Ice
- A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
- By: Jonathan C. Slaght
- Narrated by: Jonathan C. Slaght
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of Eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist.
-
-
Years in the making and well worth the wait
- By Kelsey F. on 12-31-20
-
Falcon
- By: Helen Macdonald
- Narrated by: Helen Macdonald
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before best-selling author Helen Macdonald told the story of the goshawk in H Is for Hawk, she told the story of the falcon, in a cultural history of the masterful creature that can "cut the sky in two" with the "perfectly aerodynamic profile of a raindrop", as she so incisively puts it. In talon-sharp prose she explores the spell the falcon has had over her and, by extension, all of us, whether we've seen them "through binoculars, framed on gallery walls, versified by poets, flown as hunting birds, through Manhattan windows, sewn on flags, stamped on badges, or winnowing through the clouds over abandoned arctic radar stations."
-
-
Helen Macdonald scores again!
- By linsyh on 10-24-18
By: Helen Macdonald
-
The Peregrine
- By: J. A. Baker
- Narrated by: David Attenborough
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The nation's greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing, The Peregrine. J. A. Baker's classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in 20th-century nature writing.
-
-
A perfect meditation on the natural world
- By TJ Granack on 12-04-19
By: J. A. Baker
-
Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
-
-
A masterpiece
- By Molly-o on 08-03-20
By: Maggie O'Farrell
-
Having and Being Had
- By: Eula Biss
- Narrated by: Alex McKenna
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts," Eula Biss writes, "the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after." Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges - in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences - she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism.
-
-
Not Very Deep
- By Tom on 12-13-20
By: Eula Biss
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
Owls of the Eastern Ice
- A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
- By: Jonathan C. Slaght
- Narrated by: Jonathan C. Slaght
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of Eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist.
-
-
Years in the making and well worth the wait
- By Kelsey F. on 12-31-20
-
Falcon
- By: Helen Macdonald
- Narrated by: Helen Macdonald
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before best-selling author Helen Macdonald told the story of the goshawk in H Is for Hawk, she told the story of the falcon, in a cultural history of the masterful creature that can "cut the sky in two" with the "perfectly aerodynamic profile of a raindrop", as she so incisively puts it. In talon-sharp prose she explores the spell the falcon has had over her and, by extension, all of us, whether we've seen them "through binoculars, framed on gallery walls, versified by poets, flown as hunting birds, through Manhattan windows, sewn on flags, stamped on badges, or winnowing through the clouds over abandoned arctic radar stations."
-
-
Helen Macdonald scores again!
- By linsyh on 10-24-18
By: Helen Macdonald
-
The Peregrine
- By: J. A. Baker
- Narrated by: David Attenborough
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The nation's greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing, The Peregrine. J. A. Baker's classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in 20th-century nature writing.
-
-
A perfect meditation on the natural world
- By TJ Granack on 12-04-19
By: J. A. Baker
-
Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
-
-
A masterpiece
- By Molly-o on 08-03-20
By: Maggie O'Farrell
-
Having and Being Had
- By: Eula Biss
- Narrated by: Alex McKenna
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts," Eula Biss writes, "the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after." Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges - in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences - she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism.
-
-
Not Very Deep
- By Tom on 12-13-20
By: Eula Biss
-
The Bird Way
- A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"There is the mammal way and there is the bird way." But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries - what they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own.
-
-
Good Work but it doesn’t scale
- By Stanley Lippman on 07-02-20
-
Why Fish Don't Exist
- A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
- By: Lulu Miller
- Narrated by: Lulu Miller
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. When his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation.
-
-
If fish don't exist, do stars matter?
- By K. Ishihara on 12-05-20
By: Lulu Miller
-
The Cold Millions
- A Novel
- By: Jess Walter
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Gary Farmer, Marin Ireland, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Dolan brothers live by their wits, jumping freight trains, and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While 16-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar, and who introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: A wealthy mining magnate who will stop at nothing to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.
-
-
Good Story ....Hard to follow on Audio
- By zman on 11-13-20
By: Jess Walter
-
H Is for Hawk
- By: Helen Macdonald
- Narrated by: Helen Macdonald
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Helen MacDonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer captivated by hawks since childhood, she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators: the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral anger mirrored her own.
-
-
Mabel The Hawk--The Fire That Burned The Hurts Away
- By Sara on 04-09-15
By: Helen Macdonald
-
World of Wonders
- In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
- By: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Narrated by: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction - a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.
-
-
Interesting approach to a nonfiction book...
- By Fact addict on 01-25-21
-
The Living Mountain
- A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland
- By: Nan Shepherd, Robert Macfarlane, Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Tilda Swinton, Robert MacFarlane, Jeanette Winterson
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this masterpiece of nature writing, beautifully narrated by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.
-
-
Timeless evocation of a mountain range
- By Elizabeth P. Fowler on 06-10-19
By: Nan Shepherd, and others
-
Arctic Dreams
- By: Barry Lopez
- Narrated by: James Naughton
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This best-selling, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing.
-
-
Integration of arctic experience and wisdom
- By andrea Groves on 01-07-20
By: Barry Lopez
-
Shuggie Bain
- By: Douglas Stuart
- Narrated by: Angus King
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: She is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor.
-
-
There’s far too much real pain and sadness in the world to spend any time listening to this tale of woe
- By SuperShopper on 02-18-21
By: Douglas Stuart
-
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
-
-
An innovative and fresh listening experience
- By Scott Garrioch on 01-14-21
By: George Saunders
-
Under a White Sky
- The Nature of the Future
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The question we now face is: Can we change nature, this time in order to save it? Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, takes a hard look at the new world we are creating.
-
-
Feel Sorry For Your Grandchildren
- By Allen Moody on 02-28-21
-
Wintering
- The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
- By: Katherine May
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lee
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a breakup, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times.
-
-
I look forward to my next time of Wintering!
- By bgilmore on 01-12-21
By: Katherine May
-
Deacon King Kong
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By Linda G McDonough on 05-17-20
By: James McBride
Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Animals don’t exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.
From the internationally acclaimed author of H Is for Hawk comes Vesper Flights, a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved pieces, along with new essays on topics and stories ranging from nostalgia and science fiction to the true account of a refugee’s flight to the UK.
Her pieces range from accounts of swan upping on the Thames to watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary to seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, what we do when we watch wildlife and why.
This is a book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make the world around us, by one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers.
More from the same
Author
Narrator
What listeners say about Vesper Flights
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Michael Cox
- 12-01-20
lovely group of thought provoking small stories
Really enjoyed this book, small stories that make you think and question your life and work life balance.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- papapownall
- 09-21-20
Whimsical essays on nature
Amazingly it is six years since Helen Macdonald's incredible memoir H is for Hawk was published and this is her first book since. H is for Hawk certainly had an impact on me when I first read it and that impact has been sustained, such is its power.
Vesper Flights is in a similar style and contains a selection of nature themed essays inter twined with the aspects of the author's own life. We discover how you can actually hear the sounds of a chick in an egg, stories of flocking birds, refugees, ants, migraines and foraging for mushrooms. I loved the story of "up-swanning" and the analogy to the Brexit debate and the incredible imaginary in the piece on glow worms and the wonder of the re-emergence of horn finches in England.
This is wonderful writing and I loved it. 5 stars.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- J. LoVecchio
- 09-16-20
beautiful and detailed and fantastic
I adored this book. it really spoke to me. It's not completely easy or comfortable there is graphic animal injury and death, discussion of human rights abuses and trauma but it left my heart feeling light and my head feeling open. Wonderful to have listened to.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Bidz
- 03-05-21
stories are mind numbing
just not for me this one, started first story but it was so uninteresting I had to move to next story, it was much the same.