<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<b>For more information,
contact: For
immediate release: July 19, 2007</b><b><br>
</b>Kate Madin, Sea Grant Educator<br>
508-289-3639<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:kmadin@whoi.edu">kmadin@whoi.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<div align="center"><b><font color="#000099">Special Presentation on
Ospreys and Book Signing<br>
by Natural History Author David Gessner</font></b><br>
</div>
<br>
Who hasn’t marveled at the globe-spanning migrations of great birds and
wished to take flight with them? Now you can come closer to sharing
that experience: Join noted author David Gessner on July 26th, to hear
about his recent book Soaring With Fidel: an Osprey Odyssey from Cape
Cod to Cuba and Beyond, which details his adventures following ospreys
on their long annual migratory route and his relationship to one
particular bird.<br>
<br>
The presentation will be Thursday, July 26, at 4:00 p.m. in Redfield
Auditorium, Water Street, Woods Hole, co-sponsored by the Woods Hole
Sea Grant program and the Woods Hole Library. Gessner will be talking
about the book “and the way that migration connects our place, Cape
Cod, to so many different places in the world — Cuba, South America,
and more.”<br>
<br>
Ospreys are large, black-and-white, fish-eating raptors that can be
seen on Cape Cod from March to October, catching food and raising
young. Then, like other summer residents, they depart for winter
habitats far to the south.<br>
<br>
Not long ago, they were critically threatened by DDT pollution and loss
of habitat and nesting sites. Their numbers have recovered, assisted by
the DDT ban and by people building nest poles and platforms that the
birds use and return to each year. The birds and their large, twiggy
nests are again a common sight on the Cape. <br>
<br>
“We tend to feel an ownership of the nests near us, and the individual
birds we watch here,” Gessner said. “But they spend more than 50% of
their year on their journeys, and other places where they stop are as
important to them as here.”<br>
<br>
An assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North
Carolina, Wilmington and author of several natural history books,
Gessner is an unabashed osprey enthusiast. He has written two books
about these birds and has a Web site devoted to them. “About a decade
ago I fell hard for ospreys,” he said on the site.<br>
<br>
Gessner’s first book about these birds, titled Return of the Osprey: a
Season of Flight and Wonder, tells of the successful effort to save
ospreys and their return to Cape Cod.<br>
<br>
For his current book, Soaring With Fidel, Gessner followed several
satellite tagged birds and the general course of opsrey migration from
Cape Cod to Venezuela and back, a journey of some 7,000 miles across
two continents. Gessner captures the feel of the places the birds visit
from both a bird’s and human point of view. But the story covers
metaphorical territory as well.<br>
<br>
Reviewing the book, Publishers Weekly said, “At the outset, Gessner
tells readers that "[t]his is not a bird book"; indeed, it's more about
what Gessner came to understand about himself by spending day after day
studying one particular species of bird, the osprey. Gessner… turns his
attention to migration—why ospreys migrate to Central and South America
every winter, and what they do when they're there…. Gessner writes
beautifully, with grace and humor.”<br>
<br>
Copies of Soaring With Fidel will be available for purchase and signing
after the talk. The book is also available in local bookstores and
online sources. More information can be found at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.davidgessner.com">www.davidgessner.com</a>
and Gessner’s osprey Web site, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://ospreyworld.com/">http://ospreyworld.com/</a>.<br>
<br>
The presentation is free and open to the public; families are
especially encouraged to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.
Parking is available in on-street, metered spaces. For more
information, contact Woods Hole Sea Grant at 508-289-3639 or the Woods
Hole Library at 508-548-8961.<br>
<br>
###<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>