Red-Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park - Hardcover

The literature of bird watching is full of memoirs set in out-of-the-way, rural locales, but few are set in the heart of big cities such as New York, where Wall Street Journal ornithology columnist Marie Winn hangs her hat. In this delightful account, Winn tells of birding in Central Park with an unlikely band of fellow enthusiasts (including Mary Tyler Moore and Woody Allen). Among her objects of study were a pair of increasingly uncommon wood thrushes who set up their nest in the park's Ramble, treating city dwellers to their "penetrating, flutelike, heart-stoppingly beautiful song: Ee-oh-lee, ee-oh-loo-ee-lee, ee-lay-loo," and a pair of red-tail hawks who courted, mated, and produced offspring, thus quickening the spirits of Manhattanites. Both urbanites and those inclined to country matters will enjoy Winn's gracefully written story of observation and discovery.

"Red-Tails in Love is a witty, tender, and beguiling record of two striking Central Park-dwelling species--the red-tailed hawks on their Fifth Avenue stick nest, and the flock of binoculared 'Regulars' at their Hawk Bench. Seemingly written by someone who is part bird, the book is a lively interweaving of the family saga of Pale Male and his variously doomed mates with the tale of the Regulars' fidelity to their self-appointed roles as Nest Patrol, Feeding Squad, ombudspersons, and safety netters. Red-Tails in Love explains why some humans belong to the ardent, obsessed subspecies known as 'birdwatcher.'"
--Galway Kinnell

"Marie Winn brings the eye of a superb nature writer to the human and avian life of Central Park, and the result is a delightful book that leaves the reader with a new respect for the sheer power of nature in the face of all odds to claim its rightful place in the city."
--Michael Pollan

"Red-tailed hawks hovering above Fifth Avenue become the inspiration for daily inquiries into how one touches wildness in the heart of a city. Marie Winn gives us a book of reverie."
--Terry Tempest Williams

"This book has a rare charm, beguiling the innocent reader who thinks it's about birdwatching into a wonderland of many levels. After reading it I walked across Central Park on a familiar route and saw New York City, in face the whole urban experience, with very different eyes and spirit."
--Robert MacNeil