Walking up from the beach, Robert Finch came upon a freshly dead seabird that he initially dismissed as a common gull. But a closer inspection revealed it was a pelagic bird rarely seen inshore: a fulmar. The questions of how it had come there, and how it received the wound that killed it, prompted this week's Cape Cod Notebook.
Robert Finch is taking some time off to write a new book. In his absence we're replaying some favorite essays. This week's essay originally aired in March, 2012.