View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where did Eamonn first see a wild peregrine as a child?

2. How long was the journey to catch all the swans on the upper reaches of the River Thames?

3. How far might loggerhead turtles swim from their feeding grounds of Mexico?

4. When did the author mention that most deer-vehicle collisions occured?

5. What did Macdonald look for in a disused chalk quarry in "In Spight of Prisons"?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the author describe the Wicken fens through the ages?

2. When was the British Trust for Ornithology established, and what was its purpose?

3. How did the author's father tell her that she could figure out how far away a storm was?

4. What were the nestboxes like that Macdonald ordered for house martins?

5. In "Storm," what could the author see as she drove on the M25?

6. Why do swans flock to the Welney Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve in the winter?

7. How does the author describe vesper flights?

8. What does Macdonald say about allergies?

9. How does Macdonald compare waiting for a storm and waiting for other things in "Storm"?

10. What did the author see on display in a university museum in Rostock, Germany?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why did the author become obsessed with a painting called Swan Upping at Cookham? What did the author communicate about the past and Brexit through the tradition of swan upping?

Essay Topic 2

Why was the author struggling with knowing what season it was? How did the hares signal to her that it was spring? How and why did the author connect hares to the coming of spring?

Essay Topic 3

How did the author suffer from migraines from time to time? How would her life be put on hold during a migraine? Why were migraines so debilitating?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 846 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample