![]() Meiburg uses the bird's death to discuss the divergence between generalist and specialist species, highlighting the balance between specialized skills and malleability needed for survival. His four-part tale begins in the Falkland Islands when Meiburg and a team of scientists find the remains of male Striated Caracara named G7, and conclude he was likely killed by a Peregrine Falcon. ![]() “I don't know why, but this was the story that came to me for whatever reason.” Over the next two decades, Meiburg would trek to some of the most remote reaches of South America in an effort to better understand their story. When Meiburg encountered the unusual raptors two centuries later and found that many of Darwin's original questions about the birds persisted, he took on the task of finally figuring out the caracara's place in the larger evolutionary puzzle. “I really did feel like these birds had said, ‘You!’” he says. Though he wasn't the first to collect a Striated Caracara, Darwin was the first to document the gregarious nature of the Falkland birds. Darwin wondered how these birds had ended up on the remote Falkland Islands, and why they looked similar to scavenging birds he’d seen on the South American mainland-species now known as the Chimango Caracara and Southern Crested Caracara. He was intrigued by their inquisitive nature and penchant for pick-pocketing his crew. “The obvious questions when you meet them are, ‘What is this? Why is it like this? And what is it doing here?’” Meiburg says. “It turns out, those were the very same questions that Darwin had had about them.”Įnglish naturalist Charles Darwin had encountered Striated Caracaras during his famed voyage on the HMS Beagle in the 1830s. They’re intrusive, bold, and will eat just about anything, from small mammals and turtle eggs to carrion. Most have yellow legs, striking black-and-white plumage, featherless red faces, and blueish-silver hooked beaks. The 10 surviving species of caracara inhabit the most varied and extreme corners of South and Central America, with some populations reaching into the southern United States. Abounding with intriguing characters and too-close-for-comfort wildlife encounters, the book is an enrapturing tale about the unfolding evolutionary drama of our planet.Ī Most Remarkable Creature hinges on the charismatic genus of birds called caracaras, which are related to falcons but look more like a mash-up between a vulture and an eagle. ![]() His latest project captures the same adoration for the natural world that’s expressed in his music: In A Most Remarkable Creature, Meiburg’s debut book released last month, he explores the hidden forces that gave rise to our world and the species we share it with. If you’ve heard Meiburg’s name before, it's likely because he’s the lead singer of the band Shearwater, whose occasionally bird-themed albums have been praised by NPR and Pitchfork. “It's not an overstatement to say that I was hooked from that moment.” The birds were playful and daring-unlike any bird of prey that he’d met before. “I was walking through colonies of albatrosses and there are penguins everywhere, and whales and seals, and there are these magnificently weird caracaras running up to me and staring at me, like, ‘What are you?’” Meiburg told Audubon in a recent interview. But when he arrived at a collection of windswept, treeless islands in the far reaches of the archipelago, he was surprised to find a raptor that seemed as curious about him as he was about it: a Striated Caracara. It was 1997 and Meiburg, fresh on the heels of his college graduation, had received a year-long Watson Fellowship to study human communities in the world’s most remote places. Indie rock musician Jonathan Meiburg didn’t initially travel to the Falkland Islands for the birds.
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