(Both pictures of are Mabel, apparently goshawks can change colors through molting, and in her second year she was more snow white, than the brown of her first year.) Here are a couple of pictures of Mabel with Helen Macdonald: To give you (and myself) of how big the hawk is, because it’s tough to tell in the pictures of Mabel just by herself. Sounds kind of interesting, and she is going to train one of these birds, which are about 2 feet in length to sit on her arm and then fly out to hunt pheasants, rabbits, squirrels and other small prey. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they're the birdwatchers' dark grail.’ But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. 'In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. This is the way Macdonald compares the two (it’s from the books description on goodreads) If you showed me pictures of some birds and told me to pick out the hawk and you had some falcons and maybe some non-bald eagles I wouldn’t have known which one it is.Īnd never mind if you told me that there were different hawks how to pick out a goshawk.īut I’m not really alone here, the author early on in the book tells how people are always claiming that they have seen a goshawk, because wikipedia or some other source tells them they are big, and they see a sparrowhawks and think that they must be goshawks because they see that they are big. I knew that it is a bird and that it is a predatory animal. “Seriously, Greg? You are forty years old and you don’t know what a hawk is?”

I wasn’t actually sure I knew what a hawk was either. I didn’t know what a goshawk was before I started to read this book. Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.

Heart-wrenching and humorous, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement and a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, with a parallel examination of a legendary writer's eccentric falconry. Projecting herself 'in the hawk's wild mind to tame her' tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. An experienced falconer-Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood-she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk.

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated.

H is for hawk by helen macdonald