The Art of Hawk Watching: Finding, Enjoying, and Understanding Birds of Prey, by Joe Roy III
Hancock House Publishers, 2024
322 pages, paperback
The new book by Joe Roy III, The Art of Hawk Watching, is not easily categorized. It is not a field guide in any conventional sense, although it is filled with information about raptors. Nor is it a memoir, although the author’s life milestones and occupation provide the scaffolding for the book. It is perhaps best understood as a cri de cœur—a passionate call to look, to look everywhere and to look more closely—for birds of prey.
Part Steve Irwin (the ever-upbeat and intense “Crocodile Hunter”), part Dorian Anderson (the biker for birds, inexhaustible and hyper-focused), Roy is a character. He looks for raptors whether he’s going birding or going grocery shopping. He often birds from a bicycle, and it’s somehow always a borrowed one.
Be forewarned, Roy is a falconer, and he sprinkles falconry anecdotes throughout the text, which some readers may find off-putting. You’ll need to take Roy on his own terms, as someone who is all in on birds of prey, has learned copious amounts about them, and is eager to share his knowledge.
Beginning birders learn to look for “the jizz of a bird”—the overall impression of a bird gathered from objective features such as shape, posture, flying style, or other habitual movements, size, and coloration combined with voice, habitat, and location. If there were such a thing as a Ph.D. in the jizz of birds of prey, Roy would have one, and The Art of Hawk Watching would be his dissertation. While the book includes objective, field-guide-style facts and figures (including wingspan, wing shape, plumage color, and pattern) about each species, it also creates a much richer, more nuanced, and subjective sensory picture of raptors through Roy’s narrative and anecdotes. Take his description of kestrel identification: “kestrels move through the air with a detectable degree of buoyancy as a result of lighter wingload, as opposed to denser . . . Merlins, who move through the air in a less wispy and more fast and powerful motion. . . . Kestrels appear to flutter and softly land, whereas Merlins come in ‘hot,’ braking hard and landing more abruptly.”
One flaw in the book is the photo quality. Most photos are the author’s own. Whether the fuzziness in some of them is due to the quality of his original shots, the quality of their reproduction in the book, or both, the photos do not do justice to these magnificent birds.
But great illustrations abound in other books and apps that readers of The Art of Hawk Watching are sure to have. The strength of this book is in the details which a birder is unlikely to possess in any other source. Witness the chapter titled “Forensics.” There, Roy explains how to identify raptors by their scat: “The shape and consistency of the excrement can also be telling. In terms of shape, there are mechanical differences in how particular species defecate, resulting in specific identifiable signatures.”
That kind of arcane and offbeat knowledge is what sets The Art of Hawk Watching apart. Any birder who is curious to learn more about raptors will find things to like, things to laugh about, and things to repeat in Roy’s new book.
Lori Potter lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she can bird the mountains and the plains. She is an environmental lawyer who has reviewed several books and written a profile of Dorian Anderson for Birding.
