Status Updates From Der Wanderfalke

3.22 - November 9th
Getting nearer and nearer (only 20 yards between the Falcon and the Human now)

When hawks have gone from sight, you must look up into the sky; their reflection rises in the birds that fear them. There is so much more sky than land. (p. 81)

3.21 - November 6th

Morning was hooded and seeled with deep grey cloud and mist. The list cleared when the rain began. Many birds fled westward from the river, golden plover high among them. Their melancholy plover voices threaded down through the rain the sorrowing beauty of ultima thule. (p. 79)

3.20 - November 4th

3.19 - November 2nd
Slowly Baker seems to build a relationship with the tiercel. They recognize each other…

3.18 - October 30th

3.17 - October 29th

And I’m particularly amazed by Bakers audacity to interpret the animal behaviour, and catch myself thinking ‘how does he know that is what the birds motivate?’ Or at least, he writes his thoughts down very convincingly and I see no reason to doubt them.

A hawk‘s kill is like the warm embers of a dying fire. (p. 75)

Actually, my attention is more drawn to the observer than to the birds, either hunter or hunted. I am impressed by his loyalty, going out to the estuary for what seem to be long hours (midday, sundown I noticed so far) just about day in day out. By his knowledge of all many different ‘s names and their turning up so richly and diverse.

So far, the experience of a peregrine‘s presence seems to be more impressive than writing about it. I can appreciate the excitement of Baker supporting the bird in all these various (or similar) situations, but as yet, it is not particularly engrossing.

3.11 - October 18th

The bird out of place it’s always the first to die. Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost. (p. 65)

Baker just pointed at me, it seems. Better watch out…

3.07 - October 12

[The dunlin] passed into his dark outline, and did not re-appear. There was no brutality, no violence. The hawk’s foot reached out, and gripped, and squeezed, and quenched the dunlin‘s heart effortlessly as a man’s finger extinguishing an insect. Languidly, easily, the hawk glided down to an elm on the island to plume and eat his pretty. (p. 60)

3.04 - October 7th

I was like a galaxy to him, too big to be seen. (p. 55)

Reading Baker’s train of thought, the field mouse seems like a long-tailed Sisyphus. Eating to live; never getting ahead, moving always in the narrow way between a death and a death…

3.03 - October 5th

3.02 - October 3rd

3.01 - October 1st

I will follow him till my predatory human shape no longer darkens in terror the shaken kaleidoscope of colour that stains the deep fovea of his brilliant eye. My pagan head shall sink into the winter land, and there be purified. (p. 51)