Helen Macdonald Gets Political

Helen Macdonald, the nature writer and author of the 2015 memoir H Is for Hawk, is having an enviable Covid-19 lockdown. She Skypes from a sunlit room in her home in the village of Suffolk, in the U.K., which she describes as “ridiculously out of a picture book.” Outside are rolling hills and a field of oats. Nature even makes an occasional appearance indoors, when her parrot, green with ocher tail feathers, materializes on her shoulder or calls to her from off-screen.

Despite the idyllic setting, Macdonald feels, as most of us do, hemmed in. She’s accustomed to exploring nature in a freewheeling fashion. Now, because of the pandemic, her dealings with the outside world have become circumscribed. She’s taken up gardening, which she resisted for years. “I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with spending and , who said animals tend to divide themselves into hunters and farmers. “I’m definitely more of a hunter.”