The Hawk's Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty

by Sy Montgomery

Overview

A splendid and luminous celebration of one of nature’s most perfect and mysterious creatures—the hawk—from the New York Times bestselling author of the “astoundingly beautiful” (NPR) The Soul of an Octopus.

When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone and yet, she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell.

Over the next few years, Sy spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts. They are deeply emotional animals, quick to show anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. But they are also loyal and intensely aware of their surroundings. In this mesmerizing account, featuring sixteen pages of gorgeous color photographs, Sy passionately and vividly reveals the wonderous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life, and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668001967
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	87,960
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 5.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and author of thirty-one acclaimed books of nonfiction for adults and children, including The Hummingbirds’ Gift, the National Book Award finalist The Soul of an Octopus, and the memoir The Good Good Pig, which was a New York Times bestseller. The recipient of numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, writer Howard Mansfield, and a border collie.

Hometown:

Hancock, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1958

Place of Birth:

Frankfurt, Germany

Education:

Syracuse University: B.A., Newhouse School of Public Communications, 1979; B.A., College of Arts and Sciences, 1979

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
 
Inches from my face, I hold a living dinosaur. 
Like his ancestors, the creature I hold on my fist is a hunter, an eater of meat. As did his forebears, the therapod dinosaurs—creatures like Allosaurus, Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus—this bipedal predator possesses long arms, swiveling wrists, large finger bones, and forward-facing eyes bestowing excellent binocular vision. Like them, when he hatched out of the egg, he was covered with down. As with many of them, his baby down then gave way to feathers.
    The difference is, unlike the other dinosaurs, the one before me can fly.
His name is Mahood. He’s a young Harris’s hawk, a species native to the American southwest, with bold feather markings of mahogany brown, chestnut red, and white, and long yellow legs, his feet tipped in curved, obsidian talons. In August, he was transported from the breeder where he’d hatched in upstate New York to take up residence with my friend and neighbor, Henry Walters, a poet, parent, and master falconer.
  Mahood and I are meeting for the first time. He has not yet learned how to hunt. Henry is trying to teach him. Henry wants Mahood to get used to being around people, which is why he’s asked me to grab my falconry glove and come over.  
   Mahood consents to perch on my glove.  But the next moment, without any warning, he turns his head, looks into my eyes, opens his yellow, razor-sharp beak, and screams, full force, into my face. 
  Mahood does not like me, and is not shy about announcing this. His is not a scream of fear, but of fury: the voice of an angry dinosaur.  All birds, we now know from fossils and DNA, are, in fact, what became of the reptiles who once ruled the earth, creatures we all used to think were extinct. That they are not is a truth that Darwin’s champion, Thomas Huxley, suspected as early as 1867; he called birds “glorified reptiles.” But the connection between birds and dinosaurs is impossible to miss in a raptor.
  My husband, watching from a comfortable distance, is alarmed by Mahood’s scream. He’s used to seeing strange dogs and cats, pigs and chickens, horses, and even an octopus, relax to my touch.  But I am not surprised at all by Mahood’s reaction. Hawks, as I now know well, are different.
   My falconry instructor, Nancy Cowan, made this clear from the start: A hawk does not want you to touch it. It does not want to be petted. Ever. Not even a hawk you have raised from a hatchling and fed from your hand. Eventually, some hawks will, under certain circumstances, consent to your touch—but they don’t like it. A single mistake handling a raptor, even one you know well, may provoke it to bite you, stab its talons into your flesh, or both.
   Sometimes a hawk you’ve worked with for months or even years will attack. Henry’s previous hawk, a big female redtail, Mary, one day flew out of a tree and, instead of landing on his glove, strafed his ear, slicing through the cartilage with her outstretched talons. The upper part of his ear flopped over like a Labrador’s. (Emergency room doctors braced it so it would heal upright again.) Why? We never knew. (My husband sent me out with a hard hat the next time I flew her with Henry—but I left it behind, because many hawks dislike hats and scream at you till you take it off.)
   Hawks do not play by our rules. You can never assume that a hawk, even one you raised from a chick, will forgive your mistakes—sometimes a single error ruptures the relationship forever.  A hawk will not come to your rescue if you’re in trouble. A hawk will not comfort you if you are sad. What a falconry hawk will do, if you do everything right, is allow you to be their hunting partner—“the junior partner,” Nancy is quick to point out, for the hawk, with its exquisite vision and lightening responses, is always the superior hunter.
   “It’s a funny kind of relationship you have with a hawk,” Henry tells me weeks later. We are walking through the forest, and Mahood is keeping pace with us, flying overhead, then perching on tree limbs, looking down and keeping track of us below, what falconers call “following on.” Mahood is still immature, and Henry is well aware of the responsibility he bears for nurturing this young soul. But what is the nature of the bond you can share with a raptor?
  “It’s confusing,” says Henry. “It’s love, but all mixed up with nerves and hunger and the hunt. Humans love trying to keep up with superhuman things. It’s not like any other relationship you have with anyone else.”
   If you do everything right, a hawk will allow you to act as its servant. And for this, the falconer is profoundly grateful.
  The birds of prey preserve an ancient, primal wildness, conserved in their kind since the beginning of the world. And it’s exactly for this reason that, more than a decade after my first experiences with falconry, which I will share in the following pages, I still come back for more. I am still learning.
Today, the birds I first flew with Nancy are gone, but I have come to know their successors, and enjoy flying them with her. I’m thrilled Mahood is living on our street and plan to join Henry flying him often. And I am always looking overhead for raptors, listening for the wild and savage sound of their voices.
  I am drawn, and expect I ever will be, to the company of hawks—to be bathed, like a baptism, in the presence of their fierce, wild glory.

Editorial Reviews

03/14/2022

Naturalist Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus) explores what can be learned from birds of prey in this impassioned introduction to falconry. Blending memoir and research, Montgomery shares stories from her own experiences with raptors while weaving in thoughts from other naturalists, wildlife conservationists, friends, and her falconry instructor, the late Nancy Cowan. Montgomery began taking courses in falconry because of her love of birds, and she soon realized she’d entered “a strange new world” when she watched Cowan get bitten. With flowing, intimate, occasionally humorous prose—“A bird of prey, in fact, is so rarefied that it doesn’t even shit like the rest of us”—Montgomery reveals the uniqueness of falconry and the birds it involves. As she travels from upstate New York to parks in New Hampshire to visit raptors, she reveals them to be enigmatic, sensitive animals that are prone to outbursts of violence. She also finds them alluring creatures, and conveys vividly their hold on her: “My whole soul feels like a yawning hole that only this bird can fill.” The result is a heartfelt and informative primer, just right for adventure- and animal-loving readers. Photos. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

If you’re a bird-lover—or otherwise revel in nature—you’ll appreciate Montgomery’s latest... It’s an informative read that will make you want to go outside and look up into the sky.” —Washington Post

“The book explores Sy’s fascination with hawks, starting with her relationship with a falconer’s Harris’s hawk named Jazz. Through Jazz and her kind, Montgomery explores these magnificent, loyal, and fierce creatures, helping to better understand the natural world.” —BookRiot

“The Hawk’s Way is a perfect gift for the nature lovers in your life, and it’s the ideal size to tuck in your backpack the next time you head out for a hike into the majesty and mystery of nature.” —BookReporter

“To anyone curious about the allure of falconry, [The Hawk’s Way] is a good place to start.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Montgomery hooks readers with a striking opening line... 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.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[An] impassioned introduction to falconry... Heartfelt and informative... just right for adventure- and animal-loving readers.” —Publishers Weekly

“Gorgeously illuminating and deeply affecting.” —Booklist

“Radiant...Collapsing the distance between birds and people, this concise and charming book feels custom-made for readers of Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk.” —Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

04/01/2022

Award-winning naturalist Montgomery (The Hummingbirds' Gift) honors the hawk and other birds of prey in this engrossing work. Already intrigued by predatory birds, Montgomery's interest increased after encountering a feisty Harris's hawk during an introductory course of the New Hampshire School of Falconry. She continued to work with the hawk at the school and eventually became a falconry apprentice. Montgomery provides a wealth of information despite the concise size of this book. She describes hawk behavior and how humans should act (and not act) around them to ensure their mutual safety. She emphasizes that birds of prey are wild, much more so than what people typically experience in their relationships with mammals. She describes in detail one of the most important parts of hawk anatomy: their extraordinary eyes. She also goes over the language of falconry, including unique terms such as imping, jonking, and feaking. Moreover, the book contains outstanding images by nature photographer Tianne Strombeck. This title delivers as a celebration of the wildness and wonder of birds and as an inspiration to learn from other creatures and be more compassionate. VERDICT Recommended for anyone with an interest in falconry and predatory birds.—Dave Pugl

Library Journal

2022-02-09
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.

Kirkus Reviews