aka Ken Smith: Birds of prey

On the smaller country roads this summer, more than once a hunting bird has flown more or less alongside the car for a few seconds. Fairly often, on these roads, I have spotted a hawk on a roadside post or on a tree limb.#

In those quickly passing seconds, I have gained a better sense of the bulk of their bodies, the sharp hook of the beak, the curve of the full wing and of the narrower, darker wing silhouette inside it. The agility of their sweeping motions through air.#

This week, out of the corner of my eye, I believe I saw a hunting bird drop straight down, fluttering not flapping, stalling, I think, so as to land from directly above some prey.#

Intensity and the ecstasy of observationJ. A. Baker, the author of The Peregrine, spent many months observing falcons so as to know them well enough to write vividly about their lives, their nature. I suppose here in the city we know that we don't know much about nature, but maybe we don't know that we could learn how to learn.#

And Werner Herzog said, roughly, if you want to learn how to make films, read and reread The Peregrine. He spoke of the "intensity and the ecstasy of observation."#

One of Baker's chapters begins this way:#