Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 88
A Nature Book Reader
JEREMY MYNOTT
Jeremy Mynott is the author of Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience
The Peregrine by J.A. Baker
On the ‘Desert Island Discs’
principle I’m picking three
very different kinds of books
to remind me of some of the
different ways I respond
to birds. First, John Clare’s
poetry, which is the work of
a man who finds things for
himself, observes what he
finds with great attention
and describes it very tellingly
(Gilbert White or Henry
Thoreau would have been
other good examples.) This
is the naturalist’s response,
drawn from experience. By
contrast, Aristophanes, in
his great comic play The
Birds (412BC), treats birds as
symbols for human hopes,
fancies and ambitions
– as reflections of ourselves.
This is the response of the
imagination, and we see such
emblems and associations all
round us (think robin, swan,
peacock, eagle ...).
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But my favourite book
combines these two modes
of engagement, and in an
extraordinarily powerful
way. This is The Peregrine,
first published in 1967 by the
reclusive author J.A. Baker.
It’s the story of one man’s
obsession with a particular
bird. He becomes fascinated
with a peregrine that he
encounters locally, and he
stalks it for a whole year. He
comes to know it intimately;
indeed he comes to feel a
kind of affinity with it and
longs to be accepted by it. In
a sense he wants to be the
bird, and he uses it to express
the way he feels, or wants to
feel, about the natural world
as a whole. The writing in
the book is remarkable — it’s
a very lyrical, elevated and
daring kind of prose that
could completely fail, or
become too lush or rich or
