In their native cactus deserts in the Southwest, they hunt moorhens as big as ducks and jackrabbits that can weigh more than twice as much as they do. Harris’s hawks are big, but their appetites are bigger. A deep, coppery brown, with reddish shoulders and a white tail tip, Jazz stands more than twenty inches tall, weighs thirty ounces, and her outstretched wings span nearly four feet. On a cool, gray mid-October day, master falconer Nancy Cowan, a petite, blue-eyed blonde in her late fifties, hands me the most beautiful bird in the world: a four-year-old female Harris’s hawk (named after ornithologist Edward Harris) named Jazz.

My introduction to falconry is a bloody one. The following is an excerpt from “The Hawk’s Way.”

Montgomery will discuss and sign copies of the book Saturday, May 7, at 11 a.m. at The Toadstool Bookshop, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. In this account, Sy reveals the wondrous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life and love. But they are also loyal and intensely aware of their surroundings. They are deeply emotional animals, quick to show anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. Over the next few years, Sy spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts. From the moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell.

Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, 4-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. From Sy Montgomery, the New York Times bestselling author of “The Soul of an Octopus” comes “The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty.” When the Hancock author went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s Deering farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair.

Birdology by Sy Montgomery