Reading About the Peregrine Falcon by Carol Greene

The first bird I searched for was the nightjar, which used to nest in the valley. I can only reply that Baker succeeds in capturing our interest with the variety of the daily movements of the birds and the amazingly creative language of the descriptions. I have always longed to be part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water to return to the town as a stranger.ĭoesn’t the repetition of descriptions of birds and landscape become terribly tedious after a while, you may ask? The only explanation he gives for this obsession with bird watching is when he says: He never tells us what he does on the other days, or how he spends his evenings, no personal details are included, all of the focus being reserved for the birds and the landscape. Having said that, this novel is presented exactly like a diary with entries only for those days he spends following the peregrines. It is important to point out from the beginning that even though this book is at first glance simply the diary of a bird watcher, it is also a novel with characters, setting, plot and suspense, and therefore any liberties Baker takes with chronology, weather and sightings, are perfectly in order. The Peregrine, first published in 1967, reads as the diary he kept during that period but may include observations made over the course of the many other winters which Baker spent following the movements of these birds. Of course, my virtual walk was conducted from the comfort of my fireside and only lasted ten days whereas Baker was outdoors in all weathers in pursuit of his prey, and his walk lasted from October to March when the Peregrines migrate to Scandinavia for the summer months. I spent some time in December on a virtual walk across a ten-by-twenty-mile area, trailing J A Baker as he in turn trailed a couple of peregrine hawks over the fenlands and the estuaries of east Anglia.

Reading About the Peregrine Falcon by Carol Greene