David Gessner's latest & greatest, Return of The Osprey, is a memoir, tribute to a once-endangered species, and natural history. Return of the Osprey recounts the many discoveries David Gessner made when he immersed himself for an entire nesting season in the lives of the ospreys that had returned to his seagirt corner of Cape Cod.
The osprey, hailed by Roger Tory Peterson as the symbol of the New England coast, all but vanished during the 1950s and '60s because of the ravages of DDT. In the next few decades, however, the birds returned, slowly at first and then in a rush. Writing with passion, humor, and a reverence for the natural world, Gessner interweaves the stories of the nesting osprey pairs he observed with his own readjustment to life on the windblown, beautiful, and increasingly developed landscape he had known as a child.
With a new preface from Gessner and foreword by Helen Macdonald, Return of the Osprey celebrates one of nature's most remarkable creatures, as well as our own limitless capacity for wonder.
RETURN OF THE OSPREY:
A SEASON OF FLIGHT AND WONDER
By David Gessner
25TH Anniversary Edition
The osprey, hailed by Roger Tory Peterson as the symbol of the New England coast, all but vanished during the 1950s and '60s because of the ravages of DDT. In the next few decades, however, the birds returned, slowly at first and then in a rush. Writing with passion, humor, and a reverence for the natural world, Gessner interweaves the stories of the nesting osprey pairs he observed with his own readjustment to life on the windblown, beautiful, and increasingly developed landscape he had known as a child.
With a new preface from Gessner and foreword by Helen Macdonald, Return of the Osprey celebrates one of nature's most remarkable creatures, as well as our own limitless capacity for wonder.
A LETTER FROM DAVID GESSNER
Twenty-five years ago I published a book called Return of the Osprey. The Boston Globe called it a “classic of American Nature Writing,” and chose it as one of its top ten books of the year, and, to my delight, it has managed to stick around for a while. Ospreys are magnificent bandit-masked raptors known for their daring high dives to capture fish. Once threatened and now threatened again, in recent years they have come to define our coasts. Return of the Osprey tells the story of six months immersed in the world of the these birds, and my evolution from an osprey beginner to someone steeped in osprey behavior, lore, and science. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” John Muir wrote, and I quickly learned that ospreys are hitched to everything, including the health of marine ecosystems, the founding of the Environmental Defense Fund, and the impacts of DDT (and its banning), and, not incidentally, my well-being.
Now, in 2025, Cornell University is putting out a 25th anniversary edition with a new preface, a spectacular cover photo by Mark Smith, and a beautiful introduction by Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk. Ms. Macdonald writes: “David Gessner has hugely influenced how I write about nature. In fact, without him I might not have tried to write about it at all. There are few writers with his facility to turn the searching eye of the naturalist upon themselves, able to muse just as keenly on nature itself as what nature and place can do to, and for, a human mind and soul. The first time I came across his work I was astonished—and delighted.”
The book describes a glorious comeback. In the ‘60s and ‘70s the osprey population on Cape Cod and other coastal areas on the East Coast was decimated by DDT. When the book came out, osprey populations were booming. Now, twenty-five years later, ospreys are threatened again as falling numbers of successful nests in the Chesapeake Bay and other key osprey habitats point to a new culprit: a steep reduction of key fish species, like menhaden, that the birds depend on to survive and feed their young. My hope is that we will once again rise to the challenge, as we did in the ‘60s, and so not lose these magnificent raptors.
I also hope that Return of the Osprey will endure, like other Cape Cod classics such as The Outermost House. I’ll let Helen Macdonald have the last word:
“Return of the Osprey is a work of enormous pedagogical value in addition to being an exquisite natural history of a raptor and its locale. It’s the story of a man who taught himself to see, taught himself to know, discovering all kinds of things about himself and the wider ways that humans relate to wildness and the world around us.”
ABOUT DAVID GESSNER
David Gessner is the author of thirteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including the New York Times bestselling, All the Wild That Remains, Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature and Leave It As It Is:
A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness.
Gessner is a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine, Ecotone. His own magazine publications include pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Audubon, Orion, and many other magazines, and his prizes include a Pushcart Prize and the John Burroughs Award for Best Nature Essay for his essay “Learning to Surf.” He has also won the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment’s award for best book of creative writing, and the Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment. In 2017 he hosted the National Geographic Explorer show, “The Call of the Wild.”
He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont, whose latest book is The Christie Affair.
PRAISE FOR RETURN OF THE OSPREY
Gessner is a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine, Ecotone. His own magazine publications include pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Audubon, Orion, and many other magazines, and his prizes include a Pushcart Prize and the John Burroughs Award for Best Nature Essay for his essay “Learning to Surf.” He has also won the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment’s award for best book of creative writing, and the Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment. In 2017 he hosted the National Geographic Explorer show, “The Call of the Wild.”
He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont, whose latest book is The Christie Affair.
PRAISE FOR RETURN OF THE OSPREY
“Gessner’s witnessing of an osprey’s dive—a wing-folded plunge of 50 feet or more, talons extended at the last moment to spear a fish and carry it to the surface and then aloft—is the obvious high point of his season observing ospreys in Brewster and Dennis and the nearby waters of Cape Cod. But it is the mark of how fine a nature writer Gessner is that his description of the more prosaic activity of nest-building is as perfectly realized as the accounts of the thrilling dives. Return of the Osprey can, on those grounds alone, claim a place among the classics of American nature writing.…A reader could put “Return of the Osprey” aside at this point and feel the satisfaction that comes at the end of a memorable book. But Gessner has only been waiting for his chance for him, and the ospreys, to dazzle. And when it comes, Gessner puts you right there.” --The Boston Globe
“This beautifully told story of a season with birds of prey makes for engrossing reading as we learn about osprey life from a master essayist.” ---Booklist (Boxed starred review)
“It was David Gessner’s good fortune to become obsessively interested in ospreys, and it is ours that he writes about them with such clarity, elegance, and passion that this book becomes an instant classic of natural history. It is also a work of great spiritual power...This is a book to read, reread, and remember for a long time.”--John S. Major, Senior Editor, Book-of-the-Month Club
“Gessner’s Osprey soars with detail and a sense of wonder.”--The Miami Herald
“A year well spent and carefully recorded: heedful, respectful and filled with the romance of being out of doors.” --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A naturalist’s jewel…Gessner provides insights into the history of the great sea bird of prey that will delight both the committed birder and the general reader.”--Publisher’s Weekly
“Gessner’s Osprey soars with detail and a sense of wonder By the end of the book, you feel as if you’ve been out there with Gessner much of the time, shivering in the woods, mucking through the marsh, kayaking upriver to an isolated nest site. It’s strangely satisfying, imparting a sense of the profound. And you don’t even have to venture outdoors to experience it.” --The San Diego Union-Tribune
