Everyday wonders

Walking home from work one day during the half-year I lived in London’s Maida Vale (almost three decades ago now), I was just about to turn into an archway leading to the mews house in which I rented a room when into my path a steady stream of grey feathers suddenly began falling. From directly below I couldn’t make out the cause of this, so I ascended to the top-floor patio and climbed the metal stairs to the roof. From this better vantage point I immediately saw that I was being watched in return: looking coolly back at me from the top of the keystone, only ten yards away, were the steady yellow eyes of the falcon I had interrupted in the midst of plucking its prey.

Such moments of encounter with the natural world stick with us. For Mark Cocker, though, they comprise the fabric of daily life in the country and, more importantly, act as a foundation for the human understanding of nature.