Helen Macdonald is a falconer and poet. She keeps a goshawk called Mabel. As a child she fell in love with a rare book of intense nature writing, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, which records a winter watching wild peregrines on the Essex coast. Her new play brings her birds and his together. Baker tramps the bleak coastal marshes scanning the skies for fleeting moments of bloody drama as a peregrine stoops at immense speed after a plover or a pigeon. Helen woos her captive-bred goshawk in her spare bedroom - acclimatising it to human noise and human movement. Baker crouches over a half-dead pigeon and finishes it off for the wild falcon; Helen walks the city street with a goshawk on her fist. The stories begin to fly closer to one one another.
J. A. Baker: David Birrell; Young Helen: Gemma Lawrence; Helen: herself.
Part recorded on location on The Bird of Prey Centre at Newent, Gloucestershire.
Producer: Tim Dee.