William MacGillivray was just 21, on the verge of his career as an outstanding naturalist and bird artist, when he left Aberdeen to spend a year at his childhood home at Northton in Harris. In that year he kept a detailed journal that provides a rare insight into the rural life of 19th century Scotland, especially of the Outer Isles. MacGillivray recorded details of everything that happened in his daily life, the weather, his feelings about the people...

In these elegant, short essays, revered nature writer Richard Mabey, attempts to marry a romantic's view of the natural world with that of the meticulous observations of the scientist. By Romanticism he refers to the view that nature isn't a machine to be dissected, but a community of which we, the observers, are inextricably part.