The logbook was started forty years ago and is now prodigious in size. Its nearly five-hundred pages tell the story of Estero Morua, Mexico from the viewpoint of the Cole family. The Coles' many journeys to their sea shack on a lonely estuary in Sonora are recorded in detail in the logbook within whose pages are forty years of bird records, forty years of sketching, forty years of comment and reflection-some thoughtful, some frolicsome-all on the sun-drenched, pristine shores of the Sea of Cortez. While the present book is in part a condensation of the log along with its data, at its core are the twenty essays by Gerald A. Cole, Tom Cole, Jean Cole, Stephen West Cole, and Sally Cole."