H is for Hawk. A review

An afternoon of rain, so I headed to Dorchester Plaza to see H is for Hawk, the dramatisation of the memoir by Helen MacDonald.

For a proper review see Mark Kermode's review. 

We get a lot of Goshawk screen time and it is excellent, fascinating to see both the close up behaviour and the hunting behaviour as seen through the eyes of a falconer. As a birder, I obviously tried to age it. It seemed to me to be moulting from juvenile to adult plumage. Brownish pale-tipped feathers on the back with solid grey ones poking through in patches, horizontal barring but quite heavy and brownish. And then, suddenly, it was altogether paler, with fine breast streaking and a solid blue-grey back. The head, too had a much stronger white super. I almost stood up in the cinema and say "Its a different bird! They've replaced a moulting juvenile with an adult!" but I guess nobody else would have the slightest interest. (Google tells me four birds were used in the filming. I think there may have been two juveniles due to the varying blotching on the breast but I have no idea about the fourth). 

Only later did it occur to me that the scene where Claire Foy is taking the hawk round the house for the first time, and the bird does bird things and she talks to it, must be unscripted. You can't direct a Goshawk, so she must just ad-lib her way through this scene. Impressive. 

But for me the sight of a Goshawk close up was fantastic. And a bit more than fantastic. There was a moment when the adult female was first on screen, and I thought yes, that blaze above the eye, the clean lines of the face, that huge vicious beak, that keen eye. We've met before haven't we Mrs Goshawk? In a local wood several years back. I'd turned a corner and immediately there was a commotion. I was late in getting my binoculars on it and mucked up the viewing, but for a moment, there she was, at the top of a tree, gleaming beady eye looking straight at me. Mrs Goshawk.