Looking for the Goshawk

While packing for a recent trip to Glacier National Park in Montana, I decided to include Looking for the Goshawk. The titular bird, the Northern Goshawk, was one of the birds I really hoped to see on this trip. Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, to have my first encounter with a goshawk while reading this book about it? But I never thought it would actually happen, as these are difficult birds to see. But one evening, while driving along the park’s famed Going-to-the-Sun Road, I spotted a raptor gliding leisurely overhead. It seemed to be somewhere between Cooper’s and Red-tailed Hawk in size. Could it be? I was able to pull over and hop out just in time. Distance and horrible lighting conspired against me, but I could make out a long tail and a starkly contrasting buffy/golden bar on the upper-wing coverts. It could only be an immature Northern Goshawk. Such a poor view would seem like an unfulfilling way to get a life bird, but you take what you can get from this ghost of a bird. While reading later that night, I found that Jameson described it perfectly: “A glimpse, a sense of it, is probably the most that can reasonably be hoped for.”

Jameson’s pursuit of this bird, as told in his appropriately named book, was much more dedicated than mine. He roamed all over Great Britain looking for them, and even took his search abroad to Germany and the United States. He searched both on his own, using information from reports and acquaintances, and alongside researchers studying goshawks.

I’m not spoiling anything by stating that he does see a goshawk. Several, in fact. But actually seeing the bird, at least by the end, wasn’t the most important outcome of his searching. Through research, communication with experts, and extensive time in the field, Jameson – and by extension, the reader – learns a great deal about these birds. This includes some interesting habits. Most birders think of goshawks as exclusive denizens of extensive forests. But Jameson discovered that they could be found in unexpected places, even breeding in some of the largest cities in continental Europe. Then there’s identification, of course, as the author is constantly struggling with picking out goshawks from other raptors. His struggles surprised me a bit, even though accipiters can be notoriously tough. But then I opened a European field guide. Having never birded the continent, I had no idea how much Eurasian Sparrowhawks look like goshawks.

The narrative has a diary-like feel, as Jameson presents his search chronologically, broken down by month and day. I was a bit skeptical of this format at first, but it worked. Jameson’s account of his extensive travel is well served by the format. But it also allows for some interesting short stories, almost like asides. For instance, in just a single page the author describes watching a Hobby (a falcon) and a Jackdaw (a crow) flying in formation overhead. The only goshawk connection is that he admits he probably never would have noticed if he wasn’t looking up more often with the awareness of the possibility (albeit a slim one) of seeing a goshawk.

If, like me, you reside in North America you may be wondering: why the goshawk? Sure, it’s a cool bird and can be pretty tough to find, but it’s not like the goshawk is even close to endangered here. Not so in Great Britain. It’s estimated that there are only 500 pairs in the U.K. Not only that, but it was completely wiped out from the island in the late nineteenth century. They returned as a breeding species in the 1960’s, although no one is exactly sure how (most likely from escaped or released falconry birds).

But they’re still not doing as well as they should, given the number of young produced every year. It’s like the fledglings disperse, only to disappear. But what happens to these birds is no mystery. They are being killed by “gamekeepers” in order to protect the interests of the shooting industry. That’s how they were originally extirpated, and it’s still an issue today. I expect that American readers will be shocked by this. I, for one, can’t comprehend how a country at the forefront of bird conservation can still have a problem with the systematic slaughter of raptors. One of the answers to the question of why the goshawk is that Jameson is seeking to draw attention to its plight.

For most Americans, gamekeepers and shooting estates are unfamiliar concepts. A little more explanation about them earlier in the book would help non-British readers. There were some other British terms that I was unfamiliar with (things such as a car boot, instead of trunk), but their meaning was obvious in context. Even though Looking for the Goshawk deals primarily with the U.K. and its birds, there’s no reason birders from elsewhere wouldn’t enjoy it. I found it very similar in many regards to Tim Gallagher’s The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Imperial Dreams: Tracking the Imperial Woodpecker Through the Wild Sierra Madre, especially in that although the book is fashioned around the search for one particular species, it’s about much more than that.

Recommendation

At one point, Jameson tells another birder that “You can waste a lot of time looking for Goshawks.” He may have spent years, off and on, looking for them, but it was definitely not wasted time. Not with a result like Looking for the Goshawk. Jameson ended up with much more than a glimpse of the bird, he came away with a better understanding of it – its habits, history, and threats still faced today. Readers of Looking for the Goshawk will do the same, which is reason enough to recommend the book. But what the author discovers in the course of his search goes well beyond a single species of bird: “Looking for the Goshawk has given me a fresh perspective on landscapes and woodland interiors, and helped me notice a lot of things I would otherwise have missed.” Looking for the Goshawk provides an inspiration, no matter where you are, to get out and really look.