Raptor
Subtitle: a journey through birds : with a new preface
By: James Macdonald Lockhart
Contributors: MacGillivray, William, 1796-1852, writer of added text
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9780226470580
Subjects: Birds of prey; Bird watching; Falconiformes; Description and travel; Anecdotes
Description: "From the merlin to the golden eagle, the goshawk to the honey buzzard, James Macdonald Lockhart's stunning debut is a quest of beak, talon, wing, and sky. On its surface, Raptor is a journey across the British Isles in search of fifteen species of birds of prey, but as Lockhart seeks out these elusive predators, his quest becomes so much more: an incomparably elegant elegy on the beauty of the British landscape and, through the birds, a journey toward understanding an awesome power at the heart of the natural world--a power that is majestic and frightening in its strength, but also fragile. Taking as his guide the nineteenth-century Scottish naturalist and artist William MacGillivray, Lockhart loosely follows the historical trail forged by MacGillivray as he ventured from Aberdeen to London filling his pockets with plants and writing and illustrating the canonical A History of British Birds. Linking his journey to that of his muse, Lockhart shares his own encounters with raptors ranging from the scarce osprey to the successfully reintroduced red kite, a species once protected by medieval royal statute, revealing with poetic immediacy the extraordinary behaviors of these birds and the extreme environments they call home. Creatures both worshipped and reviled, raptors have a talon-hold on the human heart and imagination. With his book, Lockhart unravels these complicated ties in a work by turns reverent and euphoric--an interweaving of history, travel, and nature writing at its best. A hymn to wanderers, to the land and to the sky, and especially to the birds, Raptor soars." -- Publisher's description
Notes: Originally published: London : Fourth Estate, 2016. With new preface.

Includes passages from Ornithological biography : or, an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America ... [text by William Macgillivray to accompany John James Audubon's Birds of America]. First published: Edinburgh : Adam & Charles Black, [1839].

Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-374).
Table of contents: title: Hen harrier; title: Merlin; title: Golden eagle; title: Osprey; title: Sea eagle; title: Goshawk; title: Kestrel; title: Montagu's harrier; title: Peregrine falcon; title: Red kite; title: Marsh harrier; title: Honey buzzard; title: Hobby; title: Buzzard; title: Sparrowhawk.