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

Short Answer Questions

1. In "Wicken," what did the author and her guests see when they walked Wicken Fen floating past them?

2. How many beakfuls of mud might it take a Martin to build a nest?

3. How close could the author get to the deer in "Deer in the Headlights"?

4. In "Storm," what birds did the author see when driving?

5. How many eggs will a female glow-worm lay before dying?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the author describe vesper flights?

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

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

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

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

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

7. What did David Lack discover when working during the war on the early-warning chain of coast-watching radar stations?

8. What does Macdonald say that she did and did not know about deer?

9. Where were peregrine falcons nesting in "The Falcon and the Tower"?

10. When Macdonald and her brother were children, how did they observe blue tits?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What a reader knows about events and people is determined by the point of view in a book. What is the point of view in the book? How does the point of view influence what readers know about events and the author?

Essay Topic 2

The author wrote an essay about mushroom hunting. Why is it so difficult to identify mushrooms and whether they are toxic or edible? What is revealed through mushroom hunting about the limit of understanding?

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)

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