Naturalists for whom the wild is a kind of poetry often position themselves at the center of their story, ever visible as they look at the earth in wonder. Not so with James Macdonald Lock-hart. Winged creatures are squarely the main characters in his magnificent literary debut, Raptor: A Journey Through Birds (University of Chicago Press, 2017), a beautifully written paean to flight. A book agent by trade, Lockhart breaks ground as a writer with a nod to his longtime passion-the study of birds of prey-and the man who inspired it, William MacGillivray, a 19th-century pioneer in ornithology. Lock-hart journeys across England to observe 15 species of raptors, studying MacGillivray's journal entries along the way. A conversation of sorts develops as Lockhart dips in and out of MacGillivray's reflections and draws parallels with his own.
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