The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird

The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer

The starting point for The Falcon Thief is the arrest of Jeffery Lendrum shortly before he boards a flight to Dubai. He is carrying, strapped to his body, a number of eggs. Despite initial claims that they are chicken eggs it is quickly determined that the eggs are live falcon eggs, probably all removed directly from the wild. The how and the why behind this encounter is the bulk of The Falcon Thief. The eggs are part of an illicit trade in falcons and other raptors that are being smuggled to the Middle East to support a love of falconry that has been developed and supported by some of the royal families in the Middle East.

Falconry was once a common sport among the nobility of Europe and Asia. While it show more largely fell out of fashion in Europe, falconry remains a prominent status symbol in parts of the Middle East. This has apparently grown with oil wealth and innovations in the support such as falcon racing. While there are captive breeding programs that supply falcons, there is a persistent belief that wild birds are superior. To fill that need are people like Lendrum.

Lendrum grew up in Africa (Rhodesia at the time) and, based upon Hammer's research, was fascinated by egg hunting as a child. Eventually, his knowledge of raptors and their nesting habits led to an illegal (and adventurous) career as an egg smuggler. The Middle Eastern market demand drives interest in rare and difficult to obtain species. As with most markets, combine scarcity and desire and the costs for obtaining some of these birds can be enormous. For example, part of The Falcon Thief focuses on a trip that Lendrum and a couple of associates take into the Canadian Arctic in pursuit of eggs from wild gyrfalcons, the largest of the falcon species. Gyrfalcons breed on arctic coasts and tundra making them hard to find and perilous to obtain. Posing as a National Geographic film crew, the men are caught and expelled from the country but not arrested. Lendrum has less luck when pursuing eggs in Patagonia. He is caught and eventually convicted though he jumps bail without serving time. Over and over, Lendrum goes to great lengths and takes serious risks to obtain raptor eggs. Eventually it catches up to him.

While tracing Lendrum's life and illegal career, the book touches on the human fascination with bird eggs and delves into what makes people like Lendrum, who have a deep knowledge of birds, turn to activities that imperil the creatures they are fascinated by. A lot of the psychological questions posed in the book are never answered. Nor is there ever a complete accounting of precisely who is paying for what eggs and and how much. Sadly, we are left with the lurking suspicion that Lendrum may well return to his life of crime thus further imperiling a threatened species and, even if he does not, that others will take his place as long as people are willing to pay to own a rare animal. The Falcon Thief is a fascinating combination of a crime novel and a nature documentary. I found it to be excellent.

Highly recommended. show less

I really can’t blame Hammer for getting so fascinated by a news article that he wound up writing a book, because wow. This criminal. This story. The twists. The context. The crime itself. You can’t make this stuff up. It should be a movie.

I love long-form journalism like this, that uses a hooky main story—in this case, a guy caught in an airport with falcon eggs taped to his chest “for health reasons”—to explore a much larger topic, and that’s well-written to boot. Hammer reeled me in right away, kept me turning pages, tossed in all kinds of facts and characters, threw the wildest jags into the narrative, and basically wove a compelling tale that’s equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

Hammer has a really light, show more readable style that brings the scenes and characters to life while also conveying the seriousness of the subject matter and Hammer’s own personality. He’s pretty even-handed but also damning where damning is due (see: justice systems, cracks therein), and his research is very thorough and wide-ranging. He does play up some of the weirder and more cinematic elements, but I get the impression that’s more from his own crogglement than a desire to sensationalise, and also, like, I’d have as much fun with a covert helicopter mission to northern Quebec as he does.

Other things he touches on, beyond the life of a career criminal who’s either pretty dumb or really smart (or maybe both):

African conservation efforts of the 1960s
Saudi Arabian racing falcon breeding programs
the Victorian passion for egg collecting
the breeding habits of various raptors
the career trajectory of a classic British policeman turned national wildlife cop
the history of medieval falconry
the role of egg collecting in species endangerment
the global black market for live birds
marital infidelity
African gift shops
a very observant Argentinian hotel clerk
that one guy with an egg fetish

Really, the only way this could’ve been a better read for me is if there’d been a small, illustrated field guide somewhere. I’d like to have known what some of the rarer birds looked like beyond Hammer’s descriptions, and maybe some of the scenery too. (But that’s small beans; I have Google.)

If you’re looking for a compelling non-fiction read on an unusual subject, interested in environmentalism, or bored with the usual sorts of true crime, I don’t hesitate to recommend this!

To bear in mind: contains cruelty to animals and the complete disregard for the environment
9/10 show less

This is a tale of addiction. Jeffrey Lendrum loves birds and loves adventure and can't stop collecting and selling eggs, even of endangered species. He is repeatedly caught but still returns to the chase. There is lots of fascinating information here. Even though I thought it was stretched out a bit beyond the holding capacity of the story, I'd still recommend it.

The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer contains many of the elements that I enjoy in nonfiction: a riveting subject that interests me, a strong narrative to follow, and more than passable writing. Hammer follows the unbelievable story of Jeffrey Lendrum--the falcon thief--from his childhood in Rhodesia through five decades of illegal exploits in the trade of rare bird eggs. Hammer clearly did meticulous research not only into Lendrum, but the world of falconry, ornithology, and oology and he is not shy about sharing that knowledge. Like many nonfiction books, The Falcon Thief bogs down in the details at times, but balanced against the fascinating details of the crimes it still works. One misstep for me was Hammer suddenly inserting himself show more into the tale more than halfway through the book--at that point, it felt awkward. I cannot help but compare this to The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson, where Johnson successfully wrote his own storyline into the narrative from the beginning and was the better book for it. Still a high recommendation for nonfiction readers. show less

A wild tale of an international black market for rare and endangered bird eggs and one man whose obsession with collecting eggs would lead him into a life of high stakes smuggling. The author uses the man's life as a case study and keyhole into the world of bird egg collection and falcon breeding. Along the way we will learn about the sport kings that would eventually give birth to a competitive racing market that would threaten to drive wild falcons into extinction.

A fascinating tale of crime, nature, and the allure of scarcity.

true-crime, international-crime-and-mystery, endangered-species, historical-research, cultural-exploration*****

First bird populations were murdered to near extinction by the devastating effects of DDT on bird populations and the environment (that's still going on but not as overtly). Now the biggest threat to bird populations are the targeted black market smugglers who are involved with serious theft of wild eggs from subarctic Canada, and the Middle East who utilize creative hiding places for smuggling eggs and have been known to receive as much as $400,000 for one gyrfalcon egg . Then there are the collectors of oology (the study and collection of eggs) with rare bird and rare bird egg obsessions.
The narrative utilizes the work of a show more particular officer of the UK's National Wildlife Crime Unit and also a high profile smuggler who started out as an aficionado of wild raptors to infuse the book with historical and current information on the issues surrounding the falcons and the resurgence of obsession in the Emirates with falconry.
This is an excellently researched book presented in a format that can be easily absorbed by everyone, even those who are not ordinarily drawn to nonfiction.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Simon and Schuster via NetGalley. Thank you! show less

A thrilling book about bird conservation is almost as rare as the pallid peregrine, but Hammer has definitely hatched one. You don't have to be an avian enthusiast to enjoy this adventure--definitely worth seeking out.