Out of the woods

A goshawk

Northumberland’s forests have long been a refuge for one of Britain’s most mysterious and intriguing species. Author and naturalist Conor Mark Jameson has been under its spell for some time . . .

The northern goshawk (Astur gentilis, to give it its official title) can cast a spell on you. I know, because it happened to me. I was so fascinated I ended up writing a book about it, and my search for it: a journey into what we now call re-wilding.

My interest in the goshawk has been lifelong, and in some ways I feel as though I have lived my life in parallel with the species. I spent my childhood in Scotland, at a time when the goshawk was returning to Britain’s remoter forests. Kielder Forest, in Northumberland, is central to the story.

My parents retired and moved from near Glasgow to the peace and quiet of the rural landscape of the Scotland/England border. Visiting them usually involved travelling from my home in Cambridgeshire, up the A1 and across the Cheviot Hills from Newcastle. The journey would bring me through Kielder and its stands of mature conifers in a patchwork stretched across the rolling slopes. Every time I passed, northbound and southbound, I would be on the alert for a glimpse of goshawk. I would always stop and have a recce – looking, listening.

Goshawks were extinct in Britain for nearly a century from the late Victorian era. They came back in a suitably furtive fashion – not in a blaze of publicity in a high-profile partnership between organisations, landowners and sponsors, as might happen now, but by escaping or being deliberately set free by owners. The birds usually came from Finland – big, pale northern hawks.

Kielder was an obvious place to free them, as it resembles those Scandinavian forests. The goshawks established a breeding population from the early 1970s, said to be around 20 pairs. They became known as the ‘phantom of the forest’ and we were told that they couldn’t live anywhere else, being allergic to humanity.

In all those years and all those passing visits at Kielder I never had a sniff of one. They’re like that. Their ability to go undetected is legendary – a little bit like witchcraft, considering their size and sheer presence when encountered up close (captive birds, needless to say). I liked this about them – I was just happy to know they were there.

Then one day, when I least expected it, on my journey south I found a goshawk. But it was in a glass case, in a junk shop, in a town, glaring at me with its shiny glass eyes. Even in that condition it “struck fire from my mind”, as TH White put it when describing the idea of ‘reverting to a feral state’ with a trained goshawk. I couldn’t shake the image of that glare: accusatory, compelling. I then met a German conservationist who found a live goshawk not far from where I lived. Not in a forest, but at a gravel pit. When I queried what he claimed, he looked at me and calmly reported that he knew a goshawk when he saw one, as he saw them all the time. In Berlin.

It’s ten years since I wrote my love letter to the species, Looking for the Goshawk. I wanted to understand why the species remained so rare and elusive, while other birds of prey were recovering, helped by conservation. I was living down south in those years, where accepted records of goshawks were almost unknown. I promptly went to Berlin and saw a wild goshawk close-up in a public park. This young female was eating a hooded crow and looked just like the one I’d once found in a junk shop (if only it had come vibrantly to life). Berlin has 100 pairs of goshawks. The birds find sanctuary in city parks, gardens and cemeteries.

In lieu of goshawks, much closer to home I found myself searching for TH White, the only person who wrote a book about the lost raptor (as I think of it) in the 20th century (The Goshawk, 1951). Tim, as he was known to his friends, is also largely forgotten, but remembered by some as the author of fantastic tales based on the legends of King Arthur – a setting where magic is an everyday thing and goshawks have a place.

A troubled soul, White retreated from society in the years leading up to World War II. He gave up his job teaching English at a prestigious school, took a cottage in the woods and a goshawk from Germany that he would seek to tame. The hawk escaped.

I went to those woods half in hope of finding a goshawk like the one he lost, and then in slightly more hope of finding his cottage, if it still stood. I might have failed, but I was found in the wintry fields by a local family who took me into their trust. After some soul-searching, I met an elderly lady who had known Tim White from childhood and now lived in that cottage. She spoke of him with such affection, even 70 years on. He was a damaged man, and deserves some restoration, too.

We have now entered the era of re-wilding – restoring ecosystem functions on a landscape scale to meet the needs of the natural systems that sustain all life forms, ourselves included. The goshawk is an important component of these systems. And there are signs that it is finally getting clear again. Despite some continued persecution, it seems to be out of the woods such as Kielder, as we continue to repair the ecosystems on which everything ultimately depends. 

Conor Mark Jameson is author of Looking For the Goshawk, published by Bloomsbury

A hawk by any other name

In the decades when goshawks were no longer resident in Britain, there were occasional records of them being shot and trapped, the majority of these from the east coast. In 1832 a young incoming goshawk was shot and sold for £7 – indicating the extraordinary value of these birds as trophies. A decade later, a young bird landed in the rigging of a ship offshore and, typically, ended up in a glass case.

Going further back in time, the goshawk was revered by royalty. In the 1200s King John flew goshawks at cranes and other large birds for the table. They are described in the Domesday Book, and depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry on the fist of King Harold. Their value was colossal, and kings including Henry VIII liked nothing more than hawking on horseback. The status of goshawks declined as the use of firearms increased, and they were then more likely to become the quarry of the hunters, with predictable consequences.

Dr James Hill, in his History of Animals (1752), spoke of the goshawk nesting in Northumberland. Looking at old texts I found a cluster of historical records of goshawks in Northumberland in the mid-19th century; the final record of a young female goshawk trapped in 1897 at Middleton Hall, Belford, and ‘preserved’ at Ayton Castle.

Although notoriously elusive in Britain, our goshawks do offer some opportunities for people to watch and marvel at their aerial prowess. On clear days in early spring they will often display high in the sky over nesting places. In this exhibition the hawks soar with deep wingbeats followed by rollercoaster dives and ascents, showing off their breeding plumage and their power. Goshawks resemble sparrowhawks, but are about the size of buzzards with the motorised agility of falcons – all muscularity and purpose compared to the buzzard’s often languid pace. Because of their history here people tend to associate goshawks with large conifer woodlands like Kielder, but they can be equally at home nesting in deciduous trees, even isolated ones,  and in city parks, large gardens and cemeteries in cities like Prague, Berlin and Riga.