The Call Of Wild Geese

Mary Oliver is one of America's best-loved poets, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her luminous poetry celebrates nature and beauty, love and the spirit, silence and wonder, extending the visionary American tradition of Whitman, Emerson, Frost and Emily Dickinson. Her extraordinary poetry is nourished by her intimate knowledge and minute daily observation of the New England coast, its woods and ponds, its birds and animals, plants and trees.

Wild Geese Calling by Stewart Edward White is a touching novel that portrays the struggle and allure of life in the American wilderness. White's evocative description of nature and his deep understanding of human nature make this a rich and compelling story of survival and self-discovery.

In range, Wild Geese covers the geese of North America, Europe and Asia, and thus the world species except for the Hawaiian Goose or Ne-Ne. The plan of the book is similar to the author's Ducks of Britain and Europe but distribution, status and migration rightly assume a more extensive role in Wild Geese and the detailed text on those subjects is fully complemented by migration and distribution maps. Comprehensive chapters are also devoted to classification, ecology, breeding, identification, and to exploitation and conservation. The identification chapter is especially helpful with sections on adult and first winter birds, downy young, plumage variants and voice, for each species and sub-species, as well as guidance on ageing and sexing geese in the field. The text is effectively supported by 16 identification plates in colour by Carol Ogilvie, showing details of heads and bills as well as all species in flight and on the ground, and downy young. The author is an established authority on ducks and geese and has been a research scientist at the Wildfowl Trust, Slimbridge, England, since 1960.

Liturgies for Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Transfiguration, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints', St Columba's Day, Father's Day; on hunger, economic witness, peacemaking, the environment, pilgrimage, welcome, hospitality and friendship. Includes a blessing liturgy for a marriage or partnership, a wedding/partnership ceremony and resources for a memorial event. Full communion services and shorts acts of worship; liturgies for small groups and all-age gatherings; worship rooted in church life and the Iona Community's resident group on Iona, in social justice and pastoral work. So - as always with the Iona Community - worship which is contextual, with a strong justice and peace edge. Originally published as single digital downloads by Wild Goose, these are now all brought together for the first time in the second of at least two Big Books of resources and liturgies.

Wild Geese caused a sensation when it was first published in 1925. To a generation bred on sentimental escapist literature, the idea of a heroine as wild as a bronco and as fiery as a tigress was nothing short of revolutionary. In the character of Judith Gare, Martha Ostenso had painted so naked and uncompromising a portrait of human passion and need that it crossed all bounds of propriety and convention. Today, Wild Geese is widely recognized as a milestone in the development of modern realist fiction. Set on the windswept prairies, it is a story of love and tyranny, of destruction and survival, told with vigour and lyric beauty. It is also a poignant evocation of loneliness, which, like the call of the wild geese, is beyond human warmth, beyond tragedy, “an endless quest.”