Peregrine, The by J. A. Baker, Robert MacFarlane (Introduction); 1967/2005. Softcover. (New York Review Book) (CO)

A memoir of life in the wild on the trail of the peregrine falcon chronicles the habits and hunting techniques of the elusive predator while revealing the effects of human encroachment on their habitats.

From autumn to spring, J.A. Baker set out to track the daily comings and goings of a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fen lands of eastern England. He followed the birds obsessively, observing them in the air and on the ground, in pursuit of their prey, making a kill, eating, and at rest, activities he describes with an extraordinary fusion of precision and poetry. And as he continued his mysterious private quest, his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable consciousness of a hawk.

It is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical and terrifying, that these beautifully written pages record.