When we think of birds of prey, the common players come to mind: red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, peregrine falcons. The result is his recently published book, A Most Remarkable Creature (Knopf 2021), that dives deep into the history of these fascinating birds and takes the reader on a journey through South America that is revelatory, riveting, and full of knowledge and adventure. This interaction would spark a curiosity in Meiburg – an ornithologist, writer, and musician – that would eventually lead him on a years long quest to research and learn all that he could about these mysterious birds of prey. They looked at him with an avian curiosity often reserved for parrots and corvids, and when Meiburg placed a pen on the ground as an offering, the young birds took no time in snatching it and flying away. Busy “contemplating the blue-black water stretching away toward Antarctica,” Meiburg sat on the coast of one of the many islands of the Falklands when two caracaras approached him. The first time Jonathan Meiburg met a striated caracara, it stole his pen.
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