On the Wing: to the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon

Natural History, Oct, 2004 by Laurence A. Marschall

On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon by Alan Tennant Alfred A. Knopf 2004; $26.95

So here's the story: One early spring day, in the free-flying era long before 9/11, a young bird enthusiast and nature writer has signed on as a falcon trapper's helper with a crew of U.S. Army scientists on Padre Island, off the western Gulf Coast of Texas. Out of the blue, the writer gets the idea that a peregrine, tagged and loaded down with telemetry, could be followed in an airplane as it migrates to its home above the Arctic Circle. No one, to his knowledge, has ever accomplished such a feat.

He enlists the army project's pilot in his plan: a sixty-seven-year-old veteran light-aircraft aviator, former World War II combat flight instructor, and the proud owner of a battered, hailstone-pocked Cessna. After a little planning, and with a good dollop of crazy luck, the two lock on to a falcon fitted with a miniature radio transmitter filched from the army. With scanner-receiver equipment also "borrowed" from the army, they take to the air in pursuit of the errant bird, going wherever it happens to go.

Believe it or not, bird, writer, and barnstormer travel together almost all the way to Alaska, a summer breeding home for the tundra peregrine falcon. Three months later, the gonzo team repeats its performance, latching on to several falcons mid-migration in Texas and tracking them down to their winter homes in Central America. Mostly the two men fly around listening for beeps on their receiver, never catching sight of the birds they're chasing.

Sound like a snooze? Well, having just finished On the Wing in one breathless sitting, let me assure you that this book moves with the energy of a four-star action movie. Avian instinct, not wise aviation practice, is what sets the course for the flights, forcing the writer, Alan Tennant, and the pilot, George Vose, to take to the air whatever the weather, terrain, or time of day. Aloft, they often find themselves in the thick of adventure--threading their way in dense fog through a forest of giant oil-refinery towers; catching updrafts that toss them around like feathers; flying dangerously low on fuel while venturing miles from any airstrip.

Down on the ground, it doesn't get much easier. Chasing their falcon across the Canadian border, they enter foreign airspace illegally, and eventually the Mounties bring them in for questioning. Every evening, when the falcons themselves have to stop for food and rest, the two aviators come in to land and fill their tank wherever there's a convenient spot of flat ground.

Once in a while, their impromptu refuelings even require a stop at a rutted dirt strip where drug smugglers, or armed militiamen, hang out. Coming into an urban airport in Belize, they barely escape rear-end collisions with incoming commercial jetliners. Fearless and imperturbable, Vose pilots them out of one near-death experience after another, only to have Tennant urge them back into the air.

To Tennant, who has loved raptors since he was a boy, the lure of the migratory bird is too strong to resist. He wants to learn how the peregrine does it, how a bird can fly hundreds of miles a day, feeding sporadically and buffeted by uncooperative winds. Luckily, though, the story also has a human love interest--Tennant's girlfriend Jennifer. Only she has enough sense to know that you can't go on chasing magic forever. And Tennant balances his own passions with plenty of fine nature writing: keen descriptions of bird behavior, well-drawn landscapes, and thoughtful discourses on what it means to be wild. Still, the human action, in the end, is what draws the reader onward.

Tennant and Vose's journey, made in 1985, probably could not be replicated today. GPS radio locators and Internet software have done away with any need to fly around wearing headphones. Nowadays, migrating wildlife can usually be tracked much more easily, and more safely, from the comfort of a university office [but see "Wherever the Wind May Blow," by Henri Weimerskirch, page 40]. It's a safe bet, too, that anyone buzzing around in the twenty-first century, violating military airspace and cruising without a flight plan--not to mention crossing international boundaries without the proper paperwork--would probably not live long enough to write about it. The reader is thankful that Tennant did, and the book (rumored soon to be a movie, with Robert Redford as Vose) will keep you rapt to the very end.