Peregrinations

kw: book reviews, criminal activity, ornithology

On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon by Alan Tennant is a picaresque narrative of impersonations, theft, and various other examples of laws bent and sidestepped—and broken—in the service of being the first and only team to actually follow the migration of a few radio-tagged peregrine falcons.

All the action happened in the mid- or late 1980s, on the heels of an Army-sponsored project to radio tag falcons at So. Padre Island, TX, and follow the first few miles of migration using aircraft, to get a first guess as to their migration route. A satellite tracking system was in the works, but would not fly for a few more years. Tennant persuaded a pilot, who clearly hankered to follow 'a bit further, at least,' to attempt to follow a tagged falcon all the way to her Arctic nesting place. After succeeding in this, the following year they follow another into Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. They don't quite finish the route, but learn enough to know the terminus.

The book contains much meditation and a little science. I must admit, the science is good. But I find the method rather more intrusive than I'm comfortable with. I greatly applaud the satellite tracking system that is now in use, now that the radio tags have been developed to be almost wholly innocuous.

While there were surprises in Tennant's discoveries, it really isn't work that needed doing, and has been much superseded. This is a story of derring-do with a scientific veneer.