A Naturalist Along the Jersey Shore

Book excerpt: Come for a journey along the Jersey shore with naturalist and ecologist Joanna Burger In these deeply felt, closely observed personal essays, Burger invokes the intertwined lives of naturalist and wild creatures at the ever-changing edge of ocean and land. Discover with her the delicate mating dances of fiddler crabs, the dangers to piping plovers, the swarming of fish communities into the bays and estuaries, the trilling notes of Fowler's toads, and the subtle green-grays of salt marshes. Joanna Burger knows the shore through all its seasons--the first moment of spring when the herring gulls arrive on ice-gouged salt marshes, the end of spring when the great flocks of shorebirds come to feed on horseshoe crab eggs at Cape May, the summer when the peregrine hunts its prey, the fall when the migrations of hawks and monarch butterflies attract watchers from around the world, and the depths of winter when a lone snowy owl sweeps across snow-covered dunes and frozen bay. This is a book that anyone who loves the Jersey shore will cherish And because so many of these wonderful creatures live all along the Atlantic coast, it will be of equal interest to beach-lovers, naturalists, bird-watchers, fishermen, and coastal and marine scientists from North Carolina to Maine.