Ahead of our “Drink” with the RSPB’s Emma Marsh this Thursday, we present an extract from J A Baker‘s nature-writing classic

April the 4th: Wild cherry lined the green lane to the creek with the green and white of leaf and blossom. Bullfinches puffed out black and white and scarlet, flashed, and vanished into husky calling. Colour faded to the brim of water, and the land ended.

The sky was grey, but brightness floated in upon the tide. Larks sang. It was the best of the day. Dusk was already moving through the distant trees and hedges. The creeks and bays were quiet and undisturbed. The songs and calls of birds blended with the sway and ripple of the tide. I had come there to search for the peregrine. It had been late when he left the valley the previous evening, and I thought he might pause to hunt along the coast before migrating. The wind had backed to the north and the day was damp and cold. But the estuary was too peaceful, the birds too much at ease. The calm and empty sky was hawkless. On the sea-wall I found the body of a carrion crow. A peregrine had killed it not many hours before. Black feathers wreathed its bloodstained bones. Its grim, skull-cracking, eye-piercing bill pointed to the sky. It was a head and wings.

At three o’clock I suddenly felt sure that, if I went at once to the coast, eight miles away, I should find the peregrine there. Such certainty comes seldom, but when it comes it is as irresistible as the downward bending of the dowser’s twig. I went.

It seemed hopeless. Dark clouds gloomed low in the cold north wind, and the light was very bad. The falling tide was far out across the saltings. The fields were as grey and bleak as the distant sea. Land and sea had been beaten flat into the same dull toneless metal. I love the desolate, but this was beyond desolation. It was dead.

A shelduck lay on the mud, shining like a broken vase; green-black and white, chestnut-bronze, vermilion. Feathers had been plucked from its breast, flesh had been sliced from the bone, deep down inside, the blood was wet. The peregrine had fed; was he still near? I clambered up the side of the sea-wall and looked cautiously over the top.

He was there, less than a hundred yards away, perching on an overhead wire, outlined against the dark inland sky. He must have flown there while I was hidden behind the wall. He faced the wind, waiting for night, drowsy and unwilling to move. A corn bunting flew up beside him, and squeezed out its parched and feeble song. When I went closer, the bunting flew, but not the hawk. At twenty yards he began to look uneasy. He drifted lightly from the wire, flexed his wings once, turned and glided down wind. I ran along the path beside the wall and saw him alighting on a fence-post on the inland side of the dyke. As I approached, he moved farther inland, flitting from post to post. When the fence ended, he flew across to a small thorn bush on the far side of the old sea-wall.

Screened by the low green bank of the wall, I stumble along on my hands and knees towards the place where I think the hawk will be, hoping he will stay there till I come. The short grass is dry and brittle and sweet-smelling. It is spring grass, clean and sharp as salt water. I bury my face and breathe in it, breathe in the spring. A snipe flies up, and a golden plover. I lie still till they have gone. Then I move forward again, very softly, because the hawk is listening.

Slowly the dusk begins to uncoil. Not the short wild pang of winter dusk, but the long slow dusk of spring. Mist stirs in the dykes and furs the edges of the fields. I have to guess where I am in relation to the hawk. Three more yards, and I decide to take a chance. Very slowly I straighten up and look over the top of the wall. I am lucky. The hawk is only five yards away. He sees me at once. He does not fly, but his feet grip tightly on the thorny twigs of the bush, the ridged knuckles tense, and big with muscle. His wings loosen, and tremble at the edge of flight. I keep still, hoping he will relax, and accept my predatory shape that bulks against the sky.

The long feathers of his breast are rippled by the wind. I cannot see his colour. In the falling gloom he looks much larger than he really is. The noble head lowers, but lifts again at once. Swiftly now he is resigning his savagery to the night that rises round us like dark water. The great eyes look into mine. When I move my arm before his face, they still look on, as though they see something beyond me from which they cannot look away.

The last light flakes and crumbles down. Distance moves through the dim lines of the inland elms, and comes closer, and gathers behind the darkness of the hawk. I know he will not fly now. I climb over the wall and stand before him. And he sleeps.

This is an extract from The Peregrine by J A Baker (HarperCollins). Baker was one of the leading nature writers of the 20th century, and won the Duff Cooper Prize when this book was published in 1967.

For more on the wonder and drama of birds, join us at this week’s “A Drink with the Idler” when our guest will be Emma Marsh, Executive Director of the RSPB. That’s Thursday 15 May, 6-7pm. Free to subscribers – otherwise £7.50.

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