Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 120
A Nature Book Reader
NICK SMALL
Photography peddlin’, wild river lovin’ man o’ the North
Flight Identification Of
European Raptors
By R.F. Porter, Ian Willis, Steen Christensen, Bent Pors Nielsen.
The mid-seventies: toxic war
had been waged upon British
birds of prey. A Kestrel was
all you might hope to see.
Some weekends, two
male teachers routinely took
me, a lone 14 year old boy,
into wild woods (days of
trust), to log and ring small
birds. One drive upon the
North York Moors, a speck in
the sky drew gasps. Circling,
it was a Montague’s Harrier...
the rarest of our breeding
birds. How could they tell?
“Get this book”, they said.
So off the beaten track
was this book, I had to order
it, with a sense of entering an
exclusive club.
Its arrival coincided with
my family’s earliest travel
adventures, in a VW camper:
the Pyrenees, the Picos,
120
Turkey, Greece, high Sierras.
“What’s that?” Dad would
ask. And I would identify
the soaring vulture as a
Lammergeier, by its unique
silhouette, or the Osprey by
its “W” profile or the Golden
Eagle by its size, colour and
majesty.
Now, when I stand
alone in remote forest, and
a dark shape looms above,
swooping for seconds before
disappearing for ever, I feel a
warm glow, because I know,
without recourse to thought,
that I’ve just been seen by
a Goshawk.
I pack this book
every time.
