Reading About the Peregrine Falcon by Carol Greene

Baker’s patience, his discriminating and unsentimental eye, and his passionate deliberations are utterly captivating. The Peregrine is one of the most beautifully written, carefully observed and evocative wildlife accounts I have ever read. Baker has presented-not by any means restricted to the peregrine falcon-deserves warm praise for the remarkable perseverance and patience which has gone into its making, and when the observer is a gifted writer, as in the present instance, the result is even more gratifying.

The only sadness about The Peregrine is that its author is no longer with us to be honoured afresh for his achievement.Ī nature study such as Mr. His words-precise, lyrical and intensely felt-seem to have been selected as if their author were under huge pressure, both from the depth of his feelings for the bird and the weight of experience he wished to impart. The Peregrine should be known as one of the finest works on nature ever written. the lyrical prose hammers home the attraction of pitting predator against quarry.Ī powerful evocation of East Anglia’s winter landscape, and an unforgettable portrait of a man’s passionate engagement with the natural world. Baker’s feet may be on the ground, but his gaze is skyward, toward the birds he envies.

He book is a work of tireless outward observation, with an astonishingly inventive and precise prose style. It’s a book that everyone who makes films should read. This is not a book about watching a bird, but a book about becoming a bird. It has prose of the caliber that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad-an ecstasy of a delirious sort of love for what he observes. Written at a time when the extinction of the peregrine and nuclear apocalypse both seemed imminent, this is a book about the poetry of death and loss as much as it is about hawks. darkly poetic and episodic work about a man obsessively watching wild peregrine falcons in the British countryside.

Reading About the Peregrine Falcon by Carol Greene