Peregrine Spring

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What to expect

Peregrine Spring, Nancy Cowan’s memoir of her thirty years living intimately with raptors, gives us a new perspective on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Cowan shares her experiences running a world-famous falconry school, and the lessons she’s learned from her birds. From retrieving her falcon from the local police “lock up,” to a heartbreaking race to save her young peregrine from attack by a wild hawk, Cowan’s life is a constant, ever-changing adventure. Cowan’s birds have immersed her so much into their world that she has found herself courted by a Goshawk and bossed about by a Harris’s Hawk. The book carries her readers along, so they, too, meet hawks and falcons in ways they never imagined possible.

Critics Review

  • “Cowan gives us striking insights into the inner workings of the relationships between raptors and their handlers, as only someone who has dedicated her life to these birds could do.”

    Irene Pepperberg, New York Times bestselling author

  • “Nancy Cowan’s Peregrine Spring is the best narrative of a modern falconer’s life I know. It’s not a how-to, though you can learn plenty from it. Nor does Nancy pose as an all-knowing ‘Master,’ though she is a master—or mistress—of our ancient practice. What she does give us is a falconry pilgrim’s progress, from beginner to teacher, with all the thrills and delights and sometimes horrors that accompany the journey. I plan to give this book to every person who approaches me and wishes to become a falconer. It’s essential.”

    Steve Bodio, author of A Rage for Falcons

  • “A wonderful and often poignant account of Nancy Cowan’s relationship with a host of raptors; their lives, personalities, and species-related abilities.”

    Ben Kilham, author of Out on a Limb

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