A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey

"A Most Remarkable Creature" is one of the best works of nonfiction I have read in the past couple of years. Ostensibly the book tells the natural history of caracaras, a family of birds of prey that inhabit South America. But the book is also part travelogue to remote corners of the Earth, a jungle adventure, a history of South American Amerindians, and biography of William Henry Hudson. There is plenty of science in addition to the ornithology: geology; evolution; insect, reptile, and plant biology; and anthropology. When I received this book as a gift, I figured it would be a dry discussion about birds I've never seen on a continent I've never been to. That was so wrong. "A Most Remarkable Creature" is just a wonderful book: informative, entertaining, and endearing. Very highly recommended for birders (of which I'm one). Recommended for all fans of science, nature, history, and travel nonfiction.

One of the best nature books I have read

Find it thought provoking, linking info and theories from varied scientific disciplines to make a "great story."

Such a good book and being a science book, easy to read. My only disappointment is that the photos are not in color. Since this bird and its relatives are so brightly colored (as described by the author) the photos are hard to enjoy. If this book gets to enjoy a second edition, I highly recommend the publisher splurge for COLOR!

I’m a fan of the band Shearwater and follow the lead singer and author of this book on social media. I’ve never heard of caracaras before and birds are not the top of my list of most interesting creatures. In fact, they scare me a little. However, this book and Jonathan Meiburg’s love of the caracara has made me a fan of the birds!This book is beautifully written and weaves stories of JM’s own research on the birds with dinosaur fossil records and the march of our human ancestors from Pangea to the world we inhabit today. I can’t even begin to summarize the book and what it covers, but it’s well worth a read and listen. JM has a very soothing voice that makes for enjoyable listening, and his words create beautiful mental images.

I am most certainly not an ornithologist, but what is most remarkable about this book is that I am able to fall in love with Caracaras AND the people that are crucial to the narrative, without having to be. As crucial as a factual, natural history of the animals is, it is equally important to understand them through the people that they were important to as well. Jonathan Meiburg has written a book that is worthy of your time and just might make you take pause a little more often at the creatures all around us. I find myself staring at the hawks here in Iowa just a little longer and waiting for the owls to come out at night. I have sought out more William Henry Hudson and it has taken me down other journeys as well. The one negative review could not be more off base and if you appreciate a thoughtful analysis you will not be disappointed.

A very thoughtful, engaging book, on an often underappreciated, but absolutely fascinating, bird. Jonathan takes us from fieldwork in the Falklands to the Amazon, he visits with captive caracaras as well as examines their evolutionary history in detail. He brings us into the mind of 19th century biologists such as Darwin and William Henry Hudson and their first encounters with this strange and remarkable bird. I couldn't put it down, the author's passion for caracaras is infectious. I can see this book (and certainly hope!) inspiring further research on caracaras, as the author shows us what we know about them, and the many things we don't. Well worth a read.

Having followed the musical and writing career of the author for quite some time, and having had the pleasure to meet and interact with a striated caracara named Sirius who is mentioned in these pages, I knew going in that this would be a very special book. I knew from his long-form writing for magazines that Meiburg is a generous, digressive author, and I wondered how wide-ranging this book’s topics would be.The answer is: very, but virtually always in service of the main themes of the book. Which, to be fair, are broad indeed. They range from the very specific (ten species of caracara, observed closely) to the more general (the much-neglected natural history of life on earth between the KT extinction and now) to the infinite and existential (what is consciousness? can humans survive half as long as the creatures we’ve made or are making extinct?).Meiburg’s attentive observations of the world around him meet his lyrical, but not over the top, authorial voice, and together they confront these giant questions. He may not have very many of the answers, but it’s hard to look at the world the same after reading this. In the light of this book’s enlarged understanding of the condition of life on earth, even the mass extinction we are driving, as horrific and emotionally scarring as it is, seems less final and less scary - even if we are some of the victims of the disaster in the end. One ponders the possibility of a chimango-descended archaeologist picking over some miraculously preserved version of this text, 100 million years hence, and saying, “oh, so that’s what happened.” Well, at least I do.

It’s a history book, a natural sciences book, a biography and a travel book. Don’t be discouraged by the length; it reads very easily and there are new delights on every page. It’s the kind of book that makes you say, “huh, I didn’t know that” and “listen to this” to any one close by. I fell in love with caracaras.

I've just finished Jonathan Meiburg's inspired study of caracaras, the captivating "walking falcons" of the Americas. It goes by the title of "A Most Remarkable Creature" and the story wanders around the globe, from Tierra del Fuego, to Guyana, Mexico, Chile, the USA, the UK and Berlin, as the millions of years pass by. He throws in falconry, plate tectonics, CITES, glaciation, fossils, ancient cultures, Darwin and William Henry Hudson. JM is a musician and scientist. He is well read and hugely intelligent, and he also knows how to entertain. In his beautifully written book he observes humans as well as the furry, feathery and scaly. I loved the bit about meeting the largest spider in the world, in Guyana - he told that story on stage part way through a gig in London a few years ago. If you're not the biggest fan of spiders, don't worry! If JM doesn't care for them, you shouldn't feel guilty about not particularly liking them either. I'll let you into a secret, though - the spider is huge and furry, so it might make you change your mind.

I first encountered this author while he was promoting his book on a CBC Radio interview. He's also a gifted oral storyteller, and I was hooked. My sole criticism is the font is tiny!

Even if you're not particularly interested in birds you will love this book. It's about a family of falcons called caracaras and the variation across the species and how they are different from other birds of prey. It's also about the human, biological and geologic history of South America and its relationship to Antarctica, the relationship between birds and humans, the value of scientific exploration, ecology and a lot more. It's very well written - even the notes are worth reading. Highly recommended.

What an adventure; fascinating!