The Peregrine

This is an unorthodox book, a book about nature, life, death, loss, obsession, and possibly remembrance. Toward the end of the 1970's, five years after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring documented the devastation caused by pesticides, British author J. A. Baker set out to follow and document the lives of a pair of peregrines in their winter hunting grounds in the east of England. Baker never explains why he undertook this pursuit. Was it born of his fascination with raptors? Did he mean to preserve for posterity a dwindling species he believed was doomed to extinction? Or was it because he himself had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and knew his wandering days were numbered? (He would only write one other book before the disease show more ended his excursions.)

Whatever the reason, Baker guides the reader through a land of forests, marshes, and fields, keeping as far from humans as possible. From October through April, he presents a daily record (with some gaps) overflowing with novel poetic descriptions of land and sky, birds and mammals, weather and sea. With him, we watch peregrines soar and dive, hunt and rest, all the while growing more comfortable with this human creature that follows them. Baker finds himself becoming more like the falcon as winter wears on and turns to spring, and in the end comes the sadness of parting as the peregrines leave their winter grounds for other climes:

"He drifted east, calling and looking down. He called for a long time, as the hawk that departs calls down his sorrow to the one that stays."

This should be a book for everyone, but in this age when we have become distanced from nature and impatient to be entertained, it may not appeal to many. Structured as a series of diary entries, The Peregrine lacks a traditional plot, being instead a record of happenings in the wild and how a human injects himself into nature, reacts to it, shapes it, and ultimately becomes one with it. Yet if you have ever, while walking in the woods or over a prairie or along a seashore, actually bothered to be in that place--to empty yourself sufficiently of yourself to see, hear, smell, and touch it--you might well become lost in the richness of life as Baker paints it.

It's not without reason The Peregrine is considered a classic. show less

This book is unique; I have never read anything like it before.

The way Baker uses english is beyond poetic. At first it seems like a put-on: is this book really a journal, without plot or direction, and full of this absurd writing? Slowly my requirement for structure fades in his descriptions of the English countryside, until I am with him under every tree, gazing through the same binoculars, sharing the same hill. His words are the beauty of wildflowers, swaying and shining in the sun, resilient in the gray green rain of spring, and violent as thistle thorns dashed by gale winds.

My god, this book is good. Read it slowly, savor every sentence. Let the book take its time with you. Read it in quiet moments, first in the morning and show more right before sleep. show less

J. A. Baker's The Peregrine is a remarkable achievement in nature writing for both its style and substance, easily among the finest ever in the category. The book, in diary form, details the author's extensive viewing and tracking of peregrine falcons, but more accurately, his obsessive stalking of these birds of breathtaking speed and predatory skill, in the Essex countryside outside London during the fall of 1962 through the spring of 1963.

Baker's singular style is the very model of concision. It is stark and stunning prose, often more like preternatural poetry, exceptional in its beauty. He is not simply reporting the activities of the peregrines, their prey, and their surroundings, he is fully within the action and its environs, show more and so, therefore, is the reader. It is an unmatched reading experience. Baker displays an uncanny ability to describe color, movement, landscape, and weather with brilliant clarity and nuance.

Though less than 200 pages, this is not a quick or easy read. Best digested in small bites, I found it too intense for long sessions. Also, there are many passages, individual sentences, and striking word combinations which must be reread a time or two and lingered over in order to fully appreciate.

There is a somewhat lurid focus on the peregrines' kills, unflinchingly described with a certain admiration. Indeed, as the seasons progress, the author increasingly identifies with the peregrine, simultaneously grousing a growing disdain for the human species: a thoroughly fascinating narrative posture. This is essential reading; an altogether unforgettable book. show less

This is a most singular book, a story of one man's obsession with a some birds. Sounds trite? Yes but it isn't. It is one of the most powerful, moving accounts of events in a singular life that is not full of human drama. It is full of nothing much. I read somewhere that someone had written of this book: "It is a book in which nothing happens, again and again".

So why is this book rated so highly by so many people but you have never heard of it? I think because it is so focussed on one thing to the exclusion of not only everything else but everything that is human. It is like looking through the eyes of another person who has no interest in humans. If most books were compared to Beatle songs, then this is opera. If most books were show more compared to cars then this book is a kayak. If most books were compared to restaurant meals then this book is some cheese sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper and tied with brown hairy string eaten on a wet windy day by a grey sea.

Personally I loved it but I'm not sure I could say why, it is more about where it takes you instead of what's there. It is also one of those books that I see references to in other books and always to describe or enlighten another singular work.

Remarkable, weird and well worth reading show less

The winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for Non Fiction in 1968, The Peregrine follows the lives of two pairs of peregrines in East Anglia from October to April. An intensely private man so lacking in desire for human contact that his date of death was unknown for many years, Baker has written an elegy to a raptor in terms so luminous, so glorious, so sparing that each word is a drop of elixir on the tongue. A fabulous, intense book imbued with neologisms that draw the reader into an impossible relationship of sodden human clod with the ethereal.

Peregrines are one of the most impressive apex predators in this country, but it is one that we almost lost because of pesticides and persecution. They are bold, confident birds, fearing nothing else and can also claim to be the world’s fastest animal as they have been recorded at speeds in excess of 200mph in their stoop to kill their prey. Two things saved them, the banning of pesticides and they moved from the rural to the urban environment, skyscrapers replacing the cliff top eyries.

Half a century ago, J.A. Baker first published this book on these magnificent birds. The book is written as a diary, with him following on foot and bicycle a tiercel and a falcon pair over the winter over the fields and fens of Essex, he would note on show more his OS maps when he saw them, the prey that they had caught, and general notes on the weather and sky. What started as a fascination with all of the raptors in the region, rapidly became a passion before becoming a complete obsession. He learnt the peregrines habits, sought out their roosts and before long his knowledge of them grew to become an innate ability to know where and when they would appear.

This is the second time I have read The Peregrine, the first time was back in 2011. Since then I have managed to work my way through an awful lot of natural history books by a lot of authors, a lot of which have been good, all the authors have been passionate about their chosen subject, but none have had that obsession that Baker has. What also strikes me about this book though, is just how sharp it still is, Baker writes with brevity, precision and a style that is quite unique and uncompromising. It pulls no punches either, this in not a sanitised volume on the grace and power of the raptor, you will hear a lot about the remains of their meals is all the gory detail. What you do get though is an observer who completely understands his subject describing that moment when they stop soaring about the fens and start the hunt to the sheer adrenaline of the stoop. It is a snapshot of the time when the peregrine was on the edge of the abyss, somewhat abated now, but not completely safe. If you have not read this before then this 50th-anniversary edition with the thoughts of two other great writers, Mark Cocker and Robert Macfarlane included, is a great place to start. show less

The Peregrine, published in 1967, has become something of a cult classic among aficionados of nature writing. The book follows the author’s intensely personal observations of a pair of Peregrin hawks in eastern England from mid-October to early April. [The observations in question actually took place over a ten year period, but the book telescopes them into a single hunting season for purposes of presentation.]

We learn that the term falcon applies only to the female of the species; her male counterpart, who is considerably smaller, is known as a tercel. All peregrines are fierce, efficient predators whose principal prey consists of other birds, which the hawks usually kill in mid flight. They are extremely fast fliers, equipped with show more lethal talons and beaks.

The book has remained popular largely because of the high quality of the writing. I opened the book at random, and the first paragraph I encountered contained the following:

“They sailed overhead, three hundred feet up, canting slowly round on still and rigid wings. With feathers fully spread, and dilated with the sustaining air, they were wide, thick-set, cobby-looking hawks. The thin intricate mesh of pale brown and silver-grey markings overlaying the buff surfaces of their underwings contrasted with the vertical mahogany-brown streaks on the deep amber yellow of their chests. Their clenched feet shone against the white tufts of their under-tail coverts. The bunched toes were ridged and knuckled like golden grenades.”

The author is also adept at denominalization (changing a noun into a verb) and other forms of anthimeria, i.e., using one part of speech as another. But there is a problem with this level of description—after 50 pages or so, it begins to cloy; and after 190 pages, it becomes nearly unbearable.

Another problem with the book is that it has virtually no narrative arc. The “story” consists of the author going out each day to observe birds. Sometimes he sees a peregrine, or sees that other birds (described in fine detail) see a peregrine. Sometimes he sees the remains of a bird the peregrine has killed. The next day is the same, as is the next day, and on it goes. Admittedly, there is some (very modest) progression in that as we get deeper and deeper into the book, the author is able to approach the peregrines more and more closely. But nothing else happens.

I would recommend that readers of the book take it a soupcon at a time. Teachers of English or creative writing can analyze randomly chosen passages as examples of virtuoso composition. But for me, the book as a whole is a little too much of a good thing.

(JAB) show less