Alexander Skutch portrays his life as an intrepid naturalist in his own personal style. This autobiography and natural history recounts his early years growing up in Maryland and Maine and his adventures in Central America and Jamaica during the 1920s and 1930s, when he began his studies of nesting birds, well before modernisation affected the region. It weaves precise descriptions of tropical plant, bird, and animal life into personal philosophy about man and nature. The book ends with the author's arrival in Costa Rica, in the then remote valley where he has lived since 1935.