“All living things”: Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago: the Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise: A Narrative of Travel with Studies of Man and Nature (London: Macmillan, 1890).
“To the bird watcher”: Carson, Silent Spring, 86.
“Don’t let the man go”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, August 23, 2017.
“That’s alive”: Lee Featherstone, phone interview by author, March 3, 2018.
“He knew what he was doing”: Featherstone, interview, March 3.
“They’re fertile, they’re alive”: Featherstone, interview, March 3.
Chapter Three: The Interview
“She was in a terrible state”: Jeffrey Lendrum, phone interview by author, March 16, 2018.
“Okay, you were arrested”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, January 21, 2018.
“This is ridiculous”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“They’re duck eggs”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“Let’s go find that car”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“Smash open the window”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“If you’re just an egg collector”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
Chapter Four: The Art of Falconry
“a falconer bearing a hawk”: Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries Among the Ruins of Ninevah and Babylon (London: Harper, 1853), 112.
“For the Bedouin”: Mark Allen, Falconry in Arabia, with a foreword by Wilfred Thesiger (London: Orbis, 1980), 15.
“a swift dog and a splendid hawk”: Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and Their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 38.
“ falcon gentle”: Oggins, 38.
“is to have his horse”: Oggins, 38.
“was surrounded by hawks”: Layard, Discoveries, 409.
“is generally made”: Layard, 412.
“Although the smallest”: Layard, 410.
“The peregrine swoops”: J. A. Baker, The Peregrine (London: HarperCollins, 1967), 40.
“The hawk breaks”: Baker, 40.
“so events in time”: Helen Macdonald, Falcon (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 31.
“between black-and-white”: Macdonald, 32.
“on a downward spiral”: Sarah Townsend, “Sheik Hamdan’s Bid to Revive the Glorious Arab Sport of Falconry,” Arabian Business, June 13, 2015.
“drawing gasps from breeders”: Townsend.
“Any strong falcon”: Anonymous falconry expert, interview by author, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, January 9, 2018.
“back-to-nature quest”: Fernanda Eberstadt, “Falconry’s Popularity Soars in England and Scotland,” Condé Nast Traveler, January 15, 2013.
Chapter Five: Rhodesia
“hyperactive and aware”: Pat Lorber, interview by author, King’s Lynn, England, August 23, 2017.
“I’m Pat Lorber. Who are you?”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“My father was passionate”: Jeffrey Lendrum, interview by author, Centurion, South Africa, December 18, 2017.
“I’ve climbed to more nests”: Jeffrey Lendrum, phone interview by author, March 16, 2018.
“tons of sticks, and build a rudimentary nest”: Vernon Tarr, interview by author, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, December 10, 2017.
“I’d climb a tree”: Howard Waller, interview by author, Inverness, Scotland, January 22, 2018.
“He saw the way things were going”: Richard Lendrum, interview by author, Rosebank, South Africa, December 18, 2017.
“were likable, smooth, gregarious, and chatty”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“They can fly in a gale”: Rob Davies, “The Verreaux’s Eagle—An Interview with Dr. Rob Davies,” African Raptors: The Online Home of African Raptor Interests, August 12, 2010, http://www.africanraptors.org/the-verreauxs-eagle-an-interview-with-dr-rob-davies/.
“like watching jet fighters”: Davies.
“Val could go put her hand gently”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“The eagle didn’t flinch”: Tarr, interview, December 10.
“Do not stay”: Valerie Gargett, The Black Eagle: A Study (Randburg: Acorn Books, 1990), 22.
“We are visitors”: Gargett, 22.
“It paid to be physically fit”: Gargett, 22.
“Jeff was cocky”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“The Lendrums are so active”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“kow-kow” … “bombing-diving-and-stooping”: A. Lendrum and J. Lendrum, Augur Buzzard Study, Ornithological Association of Zimbabwe, ninth annual report, 1982.
“They would throw up a claw”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“My dad used to go up on call-ups”: Richard Lendrum, interview, Rosebank, South Africa, December 18.
“Being a nonconformist”: Paula Lendrum Maughan, Facebook Messenger interview with author, April 17, 2019.
“hot extractions”: Jeffrey Lendrum, testimony, The Queen v. Jeffrey Lendrum, Snaresbrook Crown Court London, January 9, 2019.
“He saw some terrible things”: Michelle Conway, interview by author, London, January 9, 2019.
“Some of these impostors”: “Wall of Shame,” The C Squadron 22 Special Air Service web page, http://www.csqnsas.com/dishonour.html.
“One thing you get to know”: Paul Mullin, phone interview by author, May 9, 2018.
“incomplete breeding cycles”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“This had never happened before”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“Have you just been to the crowned eagle nest?”: Christopher “Kit” Hustler, phone interview by author, September 12, 2017.
Chapter Six: Liverpool
“I thought, I can do this”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, August 22, 2017.
“What is the Ku Klux Klan?”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“the active side”: Andy McWilliam, phone interview by author, May 17, 2018.
“They must have been”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“You, boots!”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, January 11, 2019.
“policing by consent”: British Home Office, “Definition of Policing by Consent,” December 10, 2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent/definition-of-policing-by-consent.
“to talk down”: McWilliam, interview, January 11.
“That’s it, mate”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“Don’t you like the police?”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“the New York of Europe”: The Bankers’ Magazine, vol. 11 (London: Groombridge & Sons, 1851).
“ faced stretches of waste ground”: Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980–82 Made Modern Britain (London: Penguin, 2016).
“It was us against them”: McWilliam, phone interview, May 17.
“You’re going to the Linby Colliery”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“There are fathers”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, October 2, 2017.
“an old shat of a car”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“You become detached”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
“Listen here, you bastard”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“Do you remember me?”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“Christ! This is murder”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“the opposition”: McWilliam, interview, August 22.
Chapter Seven: The Trial
“a pair of live bird eggs”: Christopher “Kit” Hustler, phone interview by author, May 7, 2018.
“Leave as fast as you can”: Hustler, phone interview, May 7.
“Are you Adrian Lendrum?”: Hustler, phone interview, May 7.
“We had no warning”: Jeffrey Lendrum, interview by author, Centurion, South Africa, December 18, 2017.
“Thank God you’re here”: Hustler, phone interview, May 7.
“Have you got the standard?”: H
ustler, phone interview, May 7.
“We just got them today”: Hustler, phone interview, May 7.
“What do you think this is?”: Pat Lorber, interview by author, King’s Lynn, England, August 23, 2017.
“one single red blotch”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“chicks growing well”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“Val is being over-the-top”: Hustler, phone interview, May 7.
“misunderstanding”: Anonymous former colleague of Peggy Lendrum at Girls’ College, Bulawayo, email to Pat Lorber, April 10, 2019, sent to author.
“Adrian had thought”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“irregular”: Prosecutor, State v. Adrian Lloyd Lendrum and Jeffrey Paul Lendrum, case number 7904-5/6, transcript, October 1, 1984.
“There was a trust placed in you”: Giles Romilly, State v. Adrian Lloyd Lendrum and Jeffrey Paul Lendrum, case number 7904-5/6, transcript, October 1, 1984.
“face just fell”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“People didn’t want”: Lorber, interview, August 23.
“He would be gone”: Hustler, phone interview, May 7.
“British police asserted”: “A Matter of Trust,” Honeyguide: Journal of Zimbabwean and Regional Ornithology 31, no. 2 (September 1985).
89“is organized internationally”: “A Matter of Trust.”
“a very personable”: P. C. Mundy, “The Lendrum Case: Retrospective 2,” Honey-guide: Journal of Zimbabwean and Regional Ornithology 56, no. 2 (September 2010).
“sense of entitlement”: Christopher “Kit” Hustler, phone interview by author, April 10, 2019.
“They couldn’t climb, so they came to me”: Jeffrey Lendrum, phone interview by author, May 18, 2018.
“he slipped away in the gloom”: Mundy, “The Lendrum Case: Retrospective 2.”
“The guy has been reading”: Jeffrey Lendrum, interview, December 18.
Chapter Eight: The Collectors
“Their pointless pursuit”: Guy Shorrock, “Operation Easter: The Beginnings,” Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Blog, May 9, 2018, https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/investigations/posts/operation-easter-the-beginnings.
“a misunderstanding”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, January 21, 2018.
“as a gift”: Guy Shorrock, phone interview by author, May 23, 2018.
“Nazi storm troopers”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“a Cabinet of rarities”: Tim Birkhead, The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 10.
“Acquisition in the name”: Birkhead, 12.
“As he rode headlong”: Carrol L. Henderson, Oology and Ralph’s Talking Eggs: Bird Conservation Comes Out of Its Shell (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 30.
“Daring Act of American Ornithologist”: Mark Barrow, A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology After Audubon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 42.
“the sad ending of an active”: Frank Haak Lattin, et al., The Oologist 26 (1908): 92.
“a passion for beauty”: Birkhead, Most Perfect Thing, 13.
“I have vivid memories”: British Birds: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, vol. 51, 1958, pp. 237–38.
“ogling his eggs”: Birkhead, Most Perfect Thing, 15.
“Perhaps their wonderful curves”: Birkhead, 15.
“distinct menace”: Julian Rubinstein, “Operation Easter,” The New Yorker, July 22, 2013.
“Are we English people”: Eric Parker, “Ethics of Egg Collecting,” The Field (London), 1935.
“the cloak-and-dagger”: Patrick Barkham, “The Egg Snatchers,” The Guardian, December 11, 2006.
“pariah of the bird-watching world”: Mary Braid, “Birds Egg Society Faces Inquiry,” The Independent, January 15, 1995.
“little Hitlers”: Stephen Moss, ed., The Hedgerows Heaped with May: The Telegraph Book of the Countryside (London: Aurum Press, 2012).
“It’s very rare”: Rubinstein, “Operation Easter.”
“Britain’s foremost wildlife detective”: The Field magazine, cited on back cover of Alan Stewart, Wildlife Detective: A Life Fighting Wildlife Crime (Edinburgh: Argyll Publishing, 2008).
“I heard that when they reached wherever they were going”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, October 2, 2017.
“We laid them out like a macabre jigsaw puzzle”: Guy Shorrock, phone interview, May 23.
“Abbott and Costello”: Barkham, “The Egg Snatchers.”
“I pass the brochures out in the countryside”: Steve Harris, phone interview by author, September 13, 2017.
“became a bit of a hero”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“Don’t you need a CITES”: Andy McWilliam, interview by author, Liverpool, August 22, 2017.
“The collectors couldn’t bullshit”: Harris, phone interview, September 13.
“Andy was a no-nonsense”: Guy Shorrock, interview by author, Sandy, England, August 26, 2017.
“Has Mr. Higham asked”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“It’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar”: Poached, directed by Timothy Wheeler (Ignite Channel, 2015), transcript of interview with Andy McWilliam.
“the pseudo-protectionists”: W. Pearson, The Osprey: Nesting Sites in the British Isles, (Brighton, England: Oriel Stringer, 1987), 11.
“obsessed with the peregrine”: Shorrock, interview, August 26.
“I traveled elsewhere”: Barkham, “Egg Snatchers.”
“the pinnacle of egg collecting”: Shorrock, interview, August 26.
“In memory of Jock—The Man”: Rubinstein, “Operation Easter.”
“I was well and truly hooked”: Rachel Newton, “Jailed Egg Thief ‘A Threat to Wildlife,’ ” Daily Post (Liverpool), April 11, 2003.
“Britain’s most ruthless”: Rubinstein, “Operation Easter.”
“Nest in Peace”: Rubinstein.
“top secret”: McWilliam, interview, January 21.
“The sight which met”: Rachel Newton, “Jailed egg thief ‘a threat to wildlife,’ ” Liverpool Daily Press, April 11, 2003, p. 11.
“My body felt cold”: “Jail For Prolific Collector of Eggs,” extract from field notes, Legal Eagle: The RSPB’s Investigations Newsletter, January 2003, no. 35.
“The [mother] bird’s”: Holly Cale, interview by author, Newent, Gloucestershire, England, August 22, 2017.
“loners and social misfits”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“from butter to packets of instant custard”: Rubinstein, “Operation Easter.”
“I can’t believe”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“They are somehow”: Emma Bryce, “Inside the Bizarre, Secretive World of Obsessive Egg Thieves,” Audubon, January 6, 2016.
“rare and difficult”: Menelaos Apostolou, “Why Men Collect Things? A Case Study of Fossilized Dinosaur Eggs,” Journal of Economic Psychology 32, no. 3 (June 2011): 410–17.
“They’re good, aren’t they?”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“If I pick this bloody”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“just didn’t seem”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“Is this going to be it?”: McWilliam, interview, October 2.
“egg collecting just fell”: Shorrock, interview, August 26.
“Put him before the beak”: Harris, phone interview, September 13.
“was regarded as trivial”: Harris, phone interview, September 13.
Chapter Nine: AfricaXtreme
“I had nothing to do”: Jeffrey Lendrum, phone interview by author, February 23, 2018.
“collecting black sparrowhawks”: Lendrum, testimony, The Queen v. Jeffrey Lendrum, Snaresbrook Crown Court London, January 9, 2019.
“Wouldn’t it be”: Paul Mullin, interview by author, Hampshire, England, August 27, 2017.
“
If you’re a border controller”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“There’s something wrong”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“You could blindfold”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“Throw some meat”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“I’ve always rescued animals”: Lendrum, phone interview by author, March 16, 2018.
“Do you want it?”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“turn your garden”: Radio commercial, recorded by Paul Mullin and Jeffrey Lendrum, played for author by Mullin.
“I’m so in love”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“proof of concept”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“It’s the most beautiful”: Jeffrey Lendrum, interview by author, Centurion, South Africa, December 18, 2017.
“What the fuck”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“I can hear”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
“a complete flight”: Lendrum, phone interview, February 23.
“He lived a very basic”: Mullin, interview, August 27.
Chapter Ten: Dubai
“If the nest is”: Frederick II, The Art of Falconry [De arte venandi cum avibus], trans. and ed. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1943), 129.
“seven days after hatching”: Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and Their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 21.
“because the longer”: Frederick II, Art of Falconry, 129.
“the [malleability] of youth”: Mark Allen, Falconry in Arabia, with a Foreword by Wilfred Thesiger (London: Orbis, 1980), 47.
“the whole thing snowballed”: Jemima Parry-Jones, interview by author, Newent, Gloucestershire, England, August 21, 2017.
“I remember being nine”: Howard Waller, interview by author, Inverness, Scotland, January 22, 2018.
“We actually hated each other at first”: Jeffrey Lendrum, interview by author, Centurion, South Africa, December 18, 2017.
“I said that I’d like”: Waller, interview, January 22.
“Suddenly an Arab”: Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (New York: Penguin Digital Editions, 2007), chapter 14.
“What I remember most”: Tom Bailey and Declan O’Donovan, “Interview with His Excellency Sheikh Butti bin Maktoum bin Juma Al Maktoum,” Wildlife Middle East News 5, no. 4 (March 2011).
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