John A. Baker lives with his wife in Essex. He has had assorted jobs, including chopping down trees and pushing book trolleys in the British Museum. In 1965 he gave up work and lived on the money he had saved, devoting all his time to his obsession - the peregrine. He re-wrote his account of this bird five times before submitting it for publication. Although he had no ornithological training and had never written a book before, when The Peregrine was published in 1967 it was received with enthusiastic reviews and praise for his lyrical prose. Later that year he was awarded the distinguished Duff Cooper prize. He was also awarded a substantial Arts Council grant. His second book, The Hill of Summer, was published in 1969 and was also received with unanimous praise by the critics.

From fall to spring, J.A. Baker set out to track the daily comings and goings of a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fen lands of eastern England. He followed the birds obsessively, observing them in the air and on the ground, in pursuit of their prey, making a kill, eating, and at rest, activities he describes with an extraordinary fusion of precision and poetry. And as he continued his mysterious private quest, his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable consciousness of a hawk.

It is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical and terrifying, that these beautifully written pages record.