A serendipitous opportunity to read ‘Enraptured by Raptors’!
The newly published work by photographer/author, Jennifer Packard, Enraptured by Raptors, offers a most welcome, positively uplifting saga. In an unlikely stroke, its action centers around the recent real life of a family of red- shouldered hawks; it is replete with wonders of discovery, raptors’ behavior and activities that we can actually relate to, and an encouragingly heartwarming response to it all, by an urban Wahington, D.C. community.
Throughout its pages, Packard weaves her and others’ experiences using photos, interviews and thoughtfully-penned field notes, into an endearing, informative read.
Part of Enraptured’s marvel lies in two facts: the story plays out on the Connecticut Avenue Bridge, a very busy area of D.C. and it takes place right smack in the midst of the historically oppressive, deadly Covid pandemic. Where and when better than now, to share this microcosm of our potential ability to come together for a deserving cause?
In March, the author’s discovery of a bird’s eye view from the overpass into a stick-hewn nest, evoked her strong, personal interest in its inhabitants, two adult hawks and their three soon-to-be hatchlings. Naming, observing, documenting and sharing the comings and goings of all five, over the course of weeks, then months, gained the fond attention of many local, regular observers who, by then, were hawk lovers, too!
Packard’s efforts toward publishing a book that champions the hawks’ cause were spurred on by Kennedy-Warren resident and friend, Amy Henderson, whose encouragement was instrumental to the project. The prominent cultural historian says that in her eyes, “the neighborhood’s adoption of the hawk family became official when…Jennifer Packard, gave them names.” That was getting personal. The interest and concern over the fledgling family members—mother, Libby and father, Walt, and babies Covid, Dorothy and Cleveland—continued to grow.
Throughout Enraptured’s pages, we delight in personal and collective experiences, emotional perceptions and sense of the community’s genuine comradery centered around their much-loved nesters.
Soon, though, the tale that Packard spins reels us in from the magnanimity. Casting a fearsome pall over the account, she reports that papa Walt has been ensnared with discarded fishing line, high atop a tree near Rock Creek, where he’d been hunting for his hungry family. Help was mustered by the nearby National Zoo and the Owl Moon Raptor Center, among others, lending an urgent, more widespread element of community involvement and dedication to the hawk family’s welfare.
The group’s ensuing attempts of heroic rescue, recovery and reunion of Walt with family, make for a tense dramatic twist in the story’s formerly benign action; but they also illustrate well the importance of Packard’s appeal to her readers, to do the right thing as stewards of our environment and its inhabitants, feathered or not.
By Katherine Arcano, Contributing Writer
“Enraptured by Raptors: The story of a hawk family that captured the heart of a community”
Newly published work by photographer/author, Jennifer Packard
Forward by ARTES Magazine Contributing Editor, Amy Henderson
92 pages. Multiple images in color, B&W
Paperback (Indie press 10/2020), $22.00. Available through Amazon (below)