NATURE COLUMN: Bill Cawley
AS today is my 66th birthday I crave an indulgence and so I thought I would explore my favourite book on the natural world.
It is JA Baker’s book ‘The Peregrine,’ first published in 1967 – a dazzling study of the bird written from a position of personal obsession.
I came across this rather slim volume while browsing in a Fowey bookshop on a July day in 1991.
It was a first edition and over time became so frequently read that it disintegrated.
The book tells the story of a fixation on the peregrine falcons that lived near his home on the salt marshes of Essex.
It takes the form of a diary from the autumn of 1962 to the following spring. Baker continued his observations even in the grip of one of the harshest winters of the 20th century when the sea froze and huge icicles hung from trees. It did not hamper his pursuit.
He seems to have been something of a recluse, consumed like the poem Windhover - ‘stirred for a birdthe achieve of, the mastery of the thing’ by Manley Hopkins.
The opening chapters outline the feeling of apprehension he had for the bird’s power – it is the fastest creature in the world – as well as his desire to become at one with it.
“I have always longed to be a part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence”.
It has many admirers, including the nature writers Robert Mcfarlane, who describes that even from the distance of over 50 years the book still sinks its talons into the reader.
Baker is fearful that the falcon will disappear and he vents his anger on the destructive impact of man on the natural world: ‘The ancient eyries are dying.’
On Christmas Eve the hawk hides in a clump of hazel and hornbeam. He writes no pain ‘is more terrible to a wild creature than his fear of man.’ And later ‘We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost.’
The fear that this magnificent creature will cease to be has receded over recent years and peregrines have now moved into cities.
My brother regularly sees one swooping over Brockwell Park pursuing pigeons and living unmolested on the skyscraper heights of South London.
Closer to home they nest on the outcrops of the Roaches although there is always the fear of the depredations of egg collectors and misguided gamekeepers.
In his last entry on April 4, Baker cycles out to the Blackwater Estuary.
The falcon is there, where he thinks it will be, on a wire. It flies down to settle on a thorn bush.
Hiding crouched in a field he watches it as distance gathers behind the bird. It is a memorable portrayal of a wonderful bird.