A Most Remarkable Creature

January 1, 2021
An entire book devoted to the odd caracara? Yes, and the narrative rarely lags. Meiburg, a journalist and leader of the band Shearwater, begins with Darwin, whose 1831-1836 voyage around the world has provided evergreen material for natural historians since. During his trek, Darwin visited the Falkland Islands, which, along with the Gal�pagos, are the only New World lands that Europeans actually discovered because they were never inhabited. There he encountered a handsome, raven-sized bird of prey, the striated caracara, distantly related to the falcon, whose bizarre behavior persuaded him to devote "more ink to their antics in The Voyage of the Beagle than he gave any other bird." Meiburg's enthusiasm matches Darwin's, and readers will share it. Unlike the fresh-meat diet of most birds of prey, caracara eat nearly everything, including insects, carrion, garbage, mucus, feces, and, according to Falkland lore, "cans of engine grease." Possessing an insatiable curiosity and intelligence, they have no fear of man, a recipe for extinction, which may be their fate. After a vivid description of the bird, its life on the isolated islands, and a torrent of amusing anecdotes, Meiburg steps back to deliver the big picture. Since the 1990s, scientists agree that birds descended directly from dinosaurs and have flourished since the larger creatures went suddenly extinct 65 million years ago. From 700 species identified during the age of dinosaurs, more than 10,000 bird species live today, far outnumbering mammals. Not only a fine writer, the author is clearly an adventurer, and he devotes other entertaining chapters to treks into the high Andes and South American jungles in search of other caracara species. He also detours regularly into the life of William Henry Hudson (1841-1922), the British naturalist and ornithologist who was acclaimed during his lifetime but is now known mainly for Green Mansions, a romantic novel set in the Venezuelan jungle. Wholly captivating natural history.

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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.

Starred review from March 1, 2021

From his first visit to the Falklands, Meiburg felt a kinship with its striated caracaras--raptors known locally as Johnny rooks. Found there and on Tierra del Fuego's outermost islands, only 500 pairs are thought to exist. Meiburg, himself, is a rare bird; not just a writer, he's also front man for the acclaimed band Shearwater. Technically falcons, striated caracaras are more like crows or parrots: intelligent, curious, and sociable. Charles Darwin, in 1834, noted the birds' mischievous behavior and wondered why they had chosen the Falklands as their habitat. That question is the point of departure for this book, and the author blends natural history, scientific enquiry, and travelogue in an attempt to better understand the species, including its past and future. Readers follow Meiburg as he stalks Johnny rook relatives in the jungles of Guyana and the Andes mountain range; he also travels to English falconry parks to see captive birds show off their brainy side. A fascinating subtheme concerns Victorian naturalist and novelist W.H. Hudson, who is now largely forgotten; he was one of the first to write appreciatively about caracaras. VERDICT An ambitious, impressive debut. The book's manifold strands will engage all sorts of readers, including bird lovers, science buffs, and eco-adventure fans.--Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2021
The Falkland Islands, a remote archipelago mainly known now for the 1980s war, is home to sheep, a few thousand people, and millions of birds. Among these avian inhabitants is one known to early sailors as the ""flying devil"" for stealing objects and food from right under their noses. Charles Darwin wrote more about these birds than any other in The Voyage of the Beagle. Meet the striated caracara, the southernmost bird of prey, once common but now a threatened species. Writer and amateur naturalist Meiburg became fascinated with the caracaras when he first encountered them and their ""forthright, impish gaze,"" and he's returned every few years to their island home to assist scientists studying the species. In this wonderful combination of travelogue (it makes one want to visit the Falklands), history of science (Henry Hudson was quite the naturalist), and natural history, the reader will meet a bird of prey that will feed on food that other predators would disdain, that would just as soon run as fly, and that is highly intelligent and social. With the curious trust and approachability often found in remote island species, the striated caracaras are truly the most mischievous of all feathered creation.

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