A Most Remarkable Creature
The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey
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“A fascinating, entertaining, and totally engrossing story.”—David Sibley, author of What It's Like to Be a Bird
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.
“As curious, wide-ranging, gregarious, and intelligent as its subject.”—Charles C. Mann, author of 1491
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 inquisitive . . . quarrelsome 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.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 30, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593349021
- File size: 284443 KB
- Duration: 09:52:35
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Combining personal stories, travelogue, science, and history, author/narrator Jonathan Meiburg introduces listeners to the striated caracara, a now-rare South American bird of prey that is so intelligent it understands spoken commands, can solve puzzles, and has a long memory. But more than having smarts, the bird is also playful and has almost endless curiosity. Naturalists and ornithologists from Darwin to today have been fascinated by the caracara's biology and behavior, and how the bird's different species have adapted to such diverse environments as remote islands, the high Andes, and tropical forests. Meiburg's performance is easy on the ears, holding listeners' attention as his musings take a variety of paths, including the extinction of dinosaurs and the awesome beauty--and danger--of Guyana's forests. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from January 25, 2021
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.
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