Wake-Robin

Burroughs wrote his first book of nature essays while clerking at the Treasury in Washington through the 1860s, homesick for the Catskills, and the homesickness shows on every page. Published in 1871, it gathers essays about birds: where they nest, how they sound, what a patient man notices if he sits still in the woods long enough. The title comes from the trillium that opens when the robins return. Burroughs is not cataloguing species so much as keeping company with them, and his plain, unhurried prose set the shape of American nature writing for the next fifty years. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here at no cost.