Summer

Summer is the season in which Helen Macdonald’s relationship with Mabel the goshawk begins to take shape in public and in the open air. Its long evenings allow training to extend beyond the house, while rain, dusk, heat, and sleepless nights give the work a changing physical setting. The season’s movement toward autumn also lends the training an edge: each new step tests whether attention and familiarity can become trust.

The season as a training ground

In one evening expedition, Macdonald takes Mabel to Midsummer Common at about eight o’clock. They cross the common, pass cattle grazing among thistles, and sit beneath an alder beside the river. The setting is shared by people absorbed in ordinary tasks: a man cleans and waxes a racing boat on the opposite slipway, while cyclists and walkers pass. Macdonald and the hawk are present but largely unnoticed, a small, still unit beside the movement of the city. Mabel’s attention, meanwhile, is on four mallards in the water. The outing establishes a pattern in which training depends not on removing the bird from the world but on letting her meet it while Macdonald watches what draws her interest.

The walk home continues into dusk and rain. Joggers gather on the paths in increasing numbers, and Macdonald positions herself and Mabel in rough grass where they can watch runners pass. The pair remain motionless, and the runners do not notice them. Then Macdonald tries a short jump from a wooden barrier around a young lime tree to her fist. Mabel makes the leap three times despite rain, wind, and runners passing nearby, before rousing. What began as quiet observation becomes a practical test of whether she will come to the fist under unfamiliar conditions. The evening’s success is modest but concrete: Mabel responds outside the house amid distractions, and Macdonald sees the training relationship hold in a wider setting.

From the house into company

Summer also measures how quickly the hawk’s surroundings expand. Fifteen days after Mabel’s arrival, Macdonald takes her to a summer lunch party at the Master’s Lodge at her college. She arrives dressed for the occasion, though her clothes are usually marked by hawk-mutes, and gives an impromptu account of falconry while Mabel tears at a rabbit leg in her hand. The lawn, the long table, and the assembled college family place the bird’s training in a social scene rather than a secluded one. Mabel is not merely described to other people: she is there, eating, while Macdonald explains the work that has brought them together.

An earlier visit from Christina shows the same movement from private training toward human company, but on a smaller scale. Macdonald is pleased to see her and also resentful of the interruption; she struggles to sustain conversation and turns back toward the hawk. She asks Christina to ignore Mabel while she removes the hawk’s hood and offers food. Mabel first watches the person turning newspaper pages, then later makes a sudden bate and eats. The episode changes Macdonald’s understanding of the bird’s response: the movement is caused by frustration and hunger, not simply fear. Mabel eats with evident pleasure and rouses afterward, a behavior she has not shown before. Summer’s domestic encounters therefore become lessons in reading the hawk, as well as trials of whether Macdonald can allow another person into the space of her attention.

Weather, landscape, and the next threshold

As the season advances, the settings of training become more exposed. On a warm evening, Stuart pulls off onto a farm track west of the city. The pale landscape includes stubble, chalky soil, hedgerows, teasels, and larks; a discarded shotgun cartridge lies near Macdonald’s feet. Mabel studies the enlarged view, then seems apprehensive when Stuart takes her on his fist. The trainers unwind the Creance and call her across the field. She flies badly, flinches as she approaches, and Macdonald uses the line to bring her back to earth. Her toes disappear partly into the soft soil, a small physical detail that marks how new the ground and the exercise are to her. Stuart tells Macdonald that Mabel needs to be keener, and Macdonald asks him to promise that the hawk will survive the night. The open field is thus both an opportunity and a measure of how little certainty the training has yet secured.

The weather then changes from rain to heat. Macdonald describes days of insomnia and summer nights that stay light for a long time. Mabel has flown well for two days, coming fifty yards to Macdonald’s raised fist, and the next step is to fly her without the Creance. The line is no longer only equipment: the passage frames the bond between hawk and trainer as a set of habits and expectations that must be tested when physical restraint is removed. The summer evening makes that test feel imminent, but it does not make it easy. Macdonald has lost trust in the wider world, and the prospect of letting the hawk fly freely presses on that vulnerability.

Summer’s social and historical contrasts

The season’s training unfolds against a longer history of who has been permitted to fly which birds. Macdonald recalls that falcons require open country that is difficult to access without wealth or connections, while goshawks can be flown in more varied places. Older falconry writing praises the peregrine as noble and associates the solitary goshawk trainer with poor character. The contrast shows how descriptions of birds have been shaped by the social standing and circumstances of the people who fly them. Summer’s college lawn and accessible common do not erase that history, but they place Macdonald’s work in settings distinct from elite hunting estates.

Macdonald also finds an earlier account of goshawks that differs from the later stereotype of the sulky, unmanageable bird. Seventeenth-century writers describe them as shy and fearful but responsive to kindness and considerate treatment. That history meets the present in Mabel’s behavior: she is not reducible to an inherited reputation, and her reactions require attention to her particular mood and surroundings. Summer is therefore more than a calendar setting. Its evenings and changing weather make room for repeated observation, while its public spaces expose the social assumptions carried into falconry. By the time heat and long nights bring the prospect of unrestrained flight close, the season has made both the hawk’s independence and the trainer’s dependence on trust unmistakable.