Hi Tweeters

According to a story some yrs ago in the National Geographic, many
Peregrine Falcons in Los Angeles, including some that were hacked in or
around the area, *were* shot by pigeon fanciers. The breeders' hatred of
peregrines was virulent, as though it were a deliberate, malicious
inversion of natural order that these insolent falcons were killing their
pigeons, the pigeons they had lovingly bred to go into complete tetany
while in flight, so as to have the ineffable joy of watching a zoned-out
bird suddenly tumble all over the sky....

'Stunned' is, I think, the appropriate word, but where to apply it....

On the subject of peregrines, has anyone else out there had the singular
pleasure of finding John (or J.H.) Baker's 'The Peregrine?' (a British
book, publ. in the US in 1967, reprinted a few years ago by the U. of Idaho
Press, now out-of-print). It is, simply, one of the most intense and
superbly-written books on *anything*, in my small opinion. He is in such
total command of craft that you won't notice the writer writing, but
instead be moved to awe by the the steady march, page by pellucid page,
into the cold, clear world of the falcon. And never have I read a more
evocative couching of an animal in its landscape as Baker has accomplished.

michael_price at mindlink.bc.ca