A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life of The World’s Smartest Birds of Prey
Book by Jonathan Meiburg
Vintage Books (Penguin Random House) 2021. 366p. Paperbound. $20.00.
Caracaras! African Gray Parrots, crows, ravens, and jays come first to mind when avian intelligence is the subject at hand. Recently the ability of chickadees, nutcrackers, and other birds to find hundreds of seeds they have buried, scatter-hoarded, has received due attention. Meiburg’s fine book should convince anyone that caracaras are right up there when it comes to smarts.
Highly inquisitive, with a diet that is complex, caracaras are noted for their attractions to anything novel, including humans. Meiburg recounts his and others’ experiences with caracaras, mostly in Latin America. His chapters take us to places such as the Falklands, Tierra del Fuego, the wilds of Guyana (formerly British Guiana), and elsewhere. He interviews biologists, shares in their field work, travels with them, and draws heavily on the historic literature of great writers such as W. H. Hudson and Darwin.
There are also lots of caracaras in the U.K., captive or escaped. Meiburg posits how they may become established there, somewhat as Hudson, from the Pampas, did when he moved to England. An entire page-worth of references in the index refers to Hudson, and his most famous writings, such as Birds of La Plata, Far away and long ago, Idle days in Patagonia, and Green mansions. Both Darwin and Hudson had significant exposure to caracaras.
Meiburg reads well. Philosophical, inquisitive, discursive, and intense. There are hundreds of passages as wide-ranging and inclusive as this: “Inca rulers and mythmakers loved symbols of duality - heaven and earth, sun and moon, dark and light, male and female - and the caracaras’ black-and-white wardrobe might have appealed to their sense of cosmic order.” (p. 228)
Enhancing a text that doesn’t need enhancing are 37 black-and-white photographs, hundreds of chapter notes, hundreds also of references in the bibliography, and a thorough index. Many of the chapter notes are extensive and as worth reading as the main text. Tremendously compelling is the photograph of the world’s largest spider, Theraphosa blondi (Goliath Birdeater, a tarantula), enveloping much of ornithologist Sean McCann’s head … and him not seeming to mind at all. Another shows a Yellow-headed Caracara grooming a snoozing tapir of “ticks, botflies, and other skin parasites”. “Tapirs sometimes roll on their backs when caracaras approach and present themselves to be groomed.” (photo caption)
It’s hard to believe caracaras are classed with the falcons. Some of them search through windrows of kelp at the shoreline, even finding and eating octopuses. This splendid book can be highly recommended.
-Harry Armistead
