A Most Remarkable Creature
The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Bird of Prey
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
An enthralling voyage of discovery to meet a rare and mysterious bird of prey that puzzled Darwin, fascinates modern-day falconers, and carries secrets of our planet's deep past in its family history.
In 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by a 'mischievous' animal he met in the Falklands: rare, crow-like falcons known today as striated caracaras. These clever, fearless birds of prey stole hats and valuables from the crew of the Beagle, and they seemed unusually interested in humans. Darwin couldn't understand why they were confined to a set of remote islands; but he set this mystery aside, and never returned to it.
Almost two centuries later, Jonathan Meiburg takes up the chase. He travels through South America in search of striated caracaras and their close relatives, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of the Guiana Shield, and reveals the wild and surprising story of their origins, their keen and flexible minds, and their possible futures.
'Fascinating' Margaret Atwood, West End Phoenix
'Hugely entertaining and enlightening' Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meiburg elevates himself to the top ranks of science writers with this enthralling debut on the obscure caracara. A family of birds, caracaras can be found in South America and resemble a "cross between a hawk and a raven." Meiburg notes how the caracara, with its reputation for stealing people's hats and other valuables, fascinated Charles Darwin, but he never pursued the questions they'd raised for him, including why they chose the Falkland Islands "for their metropolis." Meiburg follows a Falklands Conservation biologist to find a dead caracara that "looked like he collapsed from exhaustion" and investigates the rare chimango caracara as its killer, and learns from a falconer (with a devotion to a caracara named Tina) that the birds' intelligence and sociability are remarkable. Meiburg's evocative prose ("on the sandstone heights, clusters of wild guanacos turned red and gold in the sun, snorting and whinnying to let us know we were seen") will bring armchair naturalists into the wild with him. Fans of literary nature narratives will be thrilled by his lyrical account, and eager to see where Meiburg goes next.
