... effervescent ... If caracaras were able to read—and immersing myself in Mr. Meiburg’s vivid prose I sometimes fancied they just might be—this book would give them a lot of information about that exceptional creature named Jonathan Meiburg ... Mr. Meiburg usefully reminds us that the ancestors of caracaras roamed the skies well before anything resembling us had come along ... Of course, simply as a natural history of the caracaras, A Most Remarkable Creature delivers splendidly, too ... Mr. Meiburg is equally skilled at evoking the challenging environment of the Falklands as he is at placing his readers in the midst of a teeming jungle in Guyana, home of the elusive red-throated caracara. A lavishly talented nature writer, Mr. Meiburg weaves a seamless narrative from the most diverse observations ... Ever wondered what a pink-toed tarantula feels like after shedding its exoskeleton? Mr. Meiburg certainly has, and with him as a guide you think you can almost feel, for an instant, that fresh skin hardening in the forest’s cool evening air ... None of these details are extraneous to Mr. Meiburg’s narrative purpose. In fact, each of them leads us, alongside Mr. Meiburg’s party, deeper into the forest; his quest becomes ours, too ... A master of descriptive nuance, Mr. Meiburg can also be wonderfully concise ... In his other life, Mr. Meiburg is the lead singer of the well-known indie rock band Shearwater, and his beautifully written book shares in the zanily meditative, wistful ambivalence of their songs.

[An] elegant debut ... Through Meiburg's own inquiring lens, readers will soon find themselves with a new favorite animal ... Throughout his travels to meet these scrappy, adaptable birds, Meiburg captures the same feeling of gratitude I felt for the opportunity to live among wild animals who directed their appraising gazes into my own ... Meiburg's voice is poetic; where other nature writers are known for the images they paint of landscapes, here are presented impressions, concepts as complex as species' movements over geologic time, in a way that is at once clear and beautiful ... But perhaps the most important idea provoked by A Most Remarkable Creature is that we have a lot to learn from the caracaras.

... more than just a love letter to the striated caracaras, although it's definitely that; it's also a fascinating look at history, evolution and how humans interact with the creatures that we share the planet with ... Meiburg is an enormously skilled writer, and even if you've never heard of striated caracaras, you're likely to be drawn in by his enthusiasm and elegant prose. And while A Most Remarkable Creature is an endlessly interesting look at the birds, Meiburg proves to be just as adept at writing about the people he's encountered along the way. Skillfully researched and beautifully written, Meiburg's debut is a most remarkable book.

If you’ve ever been at a dull party and then met a person who suddenly brightened the vibe with energetic conversation about his abundant enthusiasms, you know a little of what it’s like to come upon Jonathan Meiburg and his first book during a pandemic ... A Most Remarkable Creature sparks almost as much curiosity about its author as it does about its feathered subject ... Meiburg journeys into the history of shifting land masses, the effects on species distribution and migration, and the asteroid strike responsible for mass extinctions. Though the tales are well-told and connected to the book’s mission to understand why different species ended up where they did, these explorations go on a little longer and delve a little deeper than I’d have liked. I craved more bird encounters ... While Meiburg seems disinclined toward environmental preaching, he does want to ignite our curiosity. The book elegantly reminds us that we cheat ourselves when we underestimate creatures we have deemed low, annoying or common.

In this wonderful combination of travelogue (it makes one want to visit the Falklands), history of science (Henry Hudson was quite the naturalist), and natural history, the reader will meet a bird of prey that will feed on food that other predators would disdain, that would just as soon run as fly, and that is highly intelligent and social. With the curious trust and approachability often found in remote island species, the striated caracaras are truly the most mischievous of all feathered creation.

... the author blends natural history, scientific inquiry, and travelogue in an attempt to better understand the species, including its past and future. Readers follow Meiburg as he stalks Johnny rook relatives in the jungles of Guyana and the Andes mountain range; he also travels to English falconry parks to see captive birds show off their brainy side. A fascinating subtheme concerns Victorian naturalist and novelist W. H. Hudson, who is now largely forgotten; he was one of the first to write appreciatively about caracaras ... An ambitious, impressive debut. The book’s manifold strands will engage all sorts of readers, including bird lovers, science buffs, and eco-adventure fans.

This wonderful, and, yes, most remarkable book has two main players, one a bird, the other a writer. The bird is the caracara, a species of falcon; the writer is William Henry Hudson, an Anglo-Argentinian born in 1841, known, though not half well enough ... The caracara is at the heart of Meiburg’s project, but his narrative deals with many topics, ranges over enormous swathes of the world’s wilder landscapes, and introduces us to a large cast of fascinating creatures, not a few of whom are human ... His book has the breadth and raciness of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and the warmth of a David Attenborough natural history program. Not the least of its strengths is a rich, pliant, and muscular prose style that can at times be sublime in the Burkean sense, that is, both beautiful and terrifying. The description here of the impact of the miles-wide asteroid that struck in the southern hemisphere sixty-six million years ago will chill your blood. But Meiburg’s strongest gift is for drawing the reader into his enthusiasms ... What is delightful about his book is the love of the world it expresses, and the calm fortitude with which it considers our current predicament.

An entire book devoted to the odd caracara? Yes, and the narrative rarely lags. Meiburg, a journalist and leader of the band Shearwater, begins with Darwin ... Meiburg’s enthusiasm matches Darwin’s, and readers will share it ... Not only a fine writer, the author is clearly an adventurer, and he devotes other entertaining chapters to treks into the high Andes and South American jungles in search of other caracara species ... Wholly captivating natural history.

Meiburg elevates himself to the top ranks of science writers with this enthralling debut on the obscure caracara ... Fans of literary nature narratives will be thrilled by his lyrical account, and eager to see where Meiburg goes next.