num_pages: 384
description: An enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever social birds of prey called caracaras which puzzled Darwin fascinate modern-day falconers and carry secrets of our planet's deep past in their family history.In 1833 Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome social and oddly crow-like falcons that were tame and inquisitivequarrelsome and passionate and so insatiably curious that they stole hats compasses and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America sensing a larger story but he set this mystery aside and never returned to it. Almost two hundred years later Jonathan Meiburg takes up this chase. He takes us through South America from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana in search of these birds: striated caracaras which still exist though they're very rare. He reveals the wild fascinating story of their history origins and possible futures. And along the way he draws us into the life and work of William Henry Hudson the Victorian writer and naturalist who championed caracaras as an unsung wonder of the natural world and to falconry parks in the English countryside where captive caracaras perform incredible feats of memory and problem-solving. A Most Remarkable Creature is a hybrid of science writing travelogue and biography as generous and accessible as it is sophisticated and absolutely riveting.
language: English
title: A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey
publisher: Knopf