THE HAWK'S WAY

The bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus and The Good Good Pig turns her attention to hawks.

Montgomery hooks readers with a striking opening line—“Inches from my face, I hold a living dinosaur”—the first hint of her passion for the subject. This slender, graceful work, featuring Strombeck’s vivid photos, is more a monograph than a book, though scientific rigor is not its strong suit. Throughout, the author displays her abundant enthusiasm for this unique predator, but she sometimes gets carried away, giving the impression that working with the hyperfocused hawk is like playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. Not that devotees will complain. Montgomery offers a good amount of stimulating information about raptor behavior, a primer on the language of falconry, and some surprising insights into what is thought to be a hawk’s mindset. Montgomery’s fervor echoes that of her mentor, the late master falconer Nancy Cowan, whose 2016 book Peregrine Spring possessed some of the same merits and deficiencies—most notably, too many flights of fancy. This is not to say that Montgomery isn’t factual on the basics of humans hunting with hawks, including proven stratagems. She also explores at length, with admiring acceptance, what it means to be the bird’s subordinate partner in the hunt. Occasionally, Montgomery’s lyrical bent finds her indulging in the sort of dramatics and anthropomorphism that are more romantic than empirical: “On my hand, I hold a waterfall, an eclipse, a lightning storm. No, more than that. Jazz is wildness itself, vividly, almost blindingly alive in a way we humans may never experience.” It’s a lovely thought but overwrought. Yet the author helps us forgive these excesses, and a rather selective love of animals, with her powers of observation and total absorption.

Not Montgomery’s best but mostly enjoyable reading on a consistently intriguing raptor.