A Wing in the Door: Life with a Red-Tailed Hawk [Paperback]

Peri Phillips McQuay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2001

Illegally plucked from her nest when only a month old to be trained for falconry, Merak is two when finally released. She isn’t used to foraging for herself, however, and wanders into a nearby town. As Peri McQuay quickly learns, this human-imprinted hawk is not quite ready for the wild. As Merak’s caretakers, the McQuays try to coax the bird to independence. In journal form, Peri McQuay writes about her life with Merak, relating the hawk’s antics — chasing a garden hose that looks like a snake, rearing up to magnificent size to threaten a house cat — and her difficulties. McQuay becomes increasingly attached even as she hopes that Merak will become fully wild again. This unusual book about a little-known topic testifies to the powerful connections between humans and animals.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At home from Panama to the Arctic, red-tailed hawks are a common sight in the skies of North America. But because red-tails are understandably shy of humans, they are usually a distant sight, and few people get the opportunity to observe the raptors up close for more than a fleeting second.

Peri McQuay, a Canadian writer and naturalist, is one of those few. Called on to help raise a young red-tail that had been taken from the wild early and trained--but only partly--by a would-be falconer, she embarked upon what she clearly considers to be the adventure of a lifetime. Warned that Merak, the young bird, might have imprinted on humans and therefore likely could not fend for herself, McQuay spent the next several seasons encouraging Merak to find a home for herself in the world to which she belonged, probing the depths of raptor psychology in an attempt to help Merak learn to hunt, find a mate, and return to the wild state that was her birthright.

The experiment, as McQuay writes in this thoughtful memoir, had mixed results. Her portrait of Merak is sympathetic, affectionate, and full of surprises (among them the humorous revelation that a bird of prey and a cat can arrive at an accommodation, and even live in peace), if tinged with sorrow for what has become of so much of the wild. McQuay's affecting tale of "the gift of this pitiably damaged yet magnificent hawk" will inspire any student of wild birds. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

In 1998, a two-year-old red-tailed hawk, taken illegally as a nestling by a falconer, was released back into the wild on the 800-acre protected wildlife area in eastern Ontario where McQuay and her family lived. Because the hawk, whom they called Merak, was human-imprinted, it took the McQuays four years to shepherd her transition more or less successfully back into her natural environment. In this engrossing memoir, McQuay (The View from Foley Mountain, 1995) relates how Merak became a part of her family's daily life, and, despite the bird's hunting ability, depended on them for sustenance, particularly during the molting season. Her clean, careful prose sometimes yields lovely imagery, as in this description of Merak's acclimation: "she practices teetering hops from branch to branch" with "a sober elation.... She seems to be holding up her feathers like a little girl hampered by long skirts." McQuay unsentimentally evokes the bird's harsh beauty, and the frequent anguish inherent in harboring a wild creature; the hawk harassed the family's dogs and would have attacked their cats without human intervention. Meanwhile, McQuay constantly worried that Merak was undernourished, and supplemented her food with skinned muskrats from a neighboring trapper. Merak built nests and laid eggs every spring, but they were never fertilized. Although Merak eventually undertook an almost completely independent existence, she still visits the McQuays when she is in need. B&w photos not seen by PW. (Mar. 20)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; 1st edition (March 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571312390
• ISBN-13: 978-1571312396
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Future Classic of Nature Literature, October 24, 2001

By 

Charlotte A. Walker "Charlotte Zoe Walker" (Gilbertsville, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Wing in the Door: Life with a Red-Tailed Hawk (Paperback)

The fact that Milkweed Press has wisely chosen to reprint Peri Phillips McQuay's A Wing in the Door: Adventures with a Red-Tail Hawk (originally published in Canada in 1993), bespeaks its enduring value, and I think helps ensure its survival into the future as a classic of nature literature. Like another great Canadian nature writer, Farley Mowat (Never Cry Wolf), Peri Mcquay explores the relation between human and wild with wisdom, intelligence, and spirit. McQuay adds to these qualities a remarkably poetic prose which deeply involves the reader in the inner experience of her story-- which is also the story of Merak the hawk, who becomes movingly real to us through the pages of this wonderful book. 'A Wing in the Door' is even more convincing and enriching because it includes not only the human-imprinted hawk and her caretakers who are attempting to help her live as close to the wild as possible, but much of the other wildlife surrounding them as well. The world of 'A Wing in the Door' is broad, rich, and varied, as well as exciting and deeply poetic. To quote from a moment in the book when the author is enjoying watching Merak in flight: 'To fly through the wings of a hawk is like flying through a kite, only far better." As a scholar and teacher of nature literature and editor of two books on naturalist John Burroughs, I find this book a treasure, one that I hope to use in the classroom.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine new Milkweed title., August 1, 2001

By 

Five Yards (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Wing in the Door: Life with a Red-Tailed Hawk (Paperback)

This gentle, closely-observed, radiant work explores new territory in the genre of writing about animals. The red-tailed hawk, Merak, never gets more than a wing in the door, literally. She is neither reared nor rehabilitated in the McQuay house. She is brought to them Ñ on their 800 acre conservation area in Ontario Ñ by the local rehabilitator to be released back into the wild. It is only almost as the door to the cage is being opened that the McQuays find out that the hawk may be human imprinted, and thus Merak may be within the circle of their lives for the rest of her own. This book, like a crafted journal, tells the story of several years of Merak's life interwoven with the lives of the people who choose to feed her (mice and rats and muskrats) and look out after her. It is always the hawk who is the focus. Merak is neither wild nor domesticated, but lives in that space where more and more nonhuman creatures will be found, as human existence encroaches upon the natural states necessary for animals to be completely themselves. McQuay is all too aware of the losses that Merak must live with, and records them with the clarity and honesty available to someone who lives amidst such hard lessons.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise for A Wing in the Door, August 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Wing in the Door: Life with a Red-Tailed Hawk (Paperback)

Toronto Globe and Mail, June 23, 2001: "In the style of Jane Goodall and other...animal behaviourists, there's a magnificent tenderness in these narratives--emphatically not to be confused with sentimentality....[A] rare and enlightened witness to the truth of non-human nature."

Washington Post Book World, April 22, 2001: "McQuay knows her land, knows its inhabitants, both plant and the animal, like a first language. Because of this she has written a compelling tale about wild places and wild and half-wild creatures and what it feels like to be around them that rings with authenticity."