Wild Wings

Wild Wings (2011) is a middle-grade novel by children’s author Gill Lewis which details the experience of a group of children intent on saving a migrating osprey It examines the themes of Love and Loss, Expanding the Community, and Mystical Connections. Lewis’s love of nature is apparent both in the novel and in her career. She is a veterinarian who has worked in countries around the globe, and her life parallels that of her characters in many respects. She has spent time in Africa and has participated in the process of banding osprey chicks in the UK. While not a Scottish sheep farmer, she lives in rural Somerset, and her appreciation of the simple life shines through in her depiction of the McGregor family and the inhabitants of their village.

When Wild Wings debuted, it won a Green Earth Book Award for its emphasis on ecological preservation. Other Lewis novels for middle-grade readers that cover similar topics include Sky Hawk (2011), One White Dolphin (2012), Moon Bear (2015), and Scarlet Ibis (2018). Wild Wings is intended for readers aged 8 to 12 in grades 3 to 7. It is classified under the categories of Children’s Bird Books and Children’s Africa Books.

This study guide and all its page citations are based on the Atheneum Books for Young Readers 2011 eBook edition of the novel.

Plot Summary

The novel spans a contemporary time period of one year, beginning in late March through the same month of the following year. While the story is told principally through the first-person narration of a young boy named Callum, select passages use the limited third-person viewpoint of a female osprey called Iris. The setting is confined to an unnamed village in coastal Scotland, but Iris’s migration leads the central characters to communicate with individuals living in the African country of The Gambia.

As the story begins, a female osprey is journeying north to a nesting site somewhere in Scotland. At the same time, three rural Scottish boys named Callum McGregor, Rob, and Euan are out for a bike ride when they discover a girl fishing for trout with her bare hands. The girl’s name is Iona, and she is regarded as the village outcast because her mother presumably stole some money from Rob’s father. Rob immediately starts to bully Iona, but Callum’s family owns the property where she is fishing, so he prevents Rob from antagonizing the girl any further.

When Iona flees, Callum follows her to return her coat and shoes, which she left behind. Iona promises to share a secret with him if he returns to the loch the following day. When he arrives, Iona climbs a giant oak tree where she has constructed a viewing platform. When Callum joins her there, he sees an osprey nest on an island in the middle of the loch. Iona says that the osprey’s mate will arrive within a day and that Callum should come back then if he wants to see her. Iona swears Callum to secrecy about the ospreys because poachers might steal their eggs or kill them because they feed on fish that humans want to keep for themselves.

Rob and Euan are annoyed when Callum spends more time with Iona than he does with them, but he can’t explain why because he promised to keep the ospreys a secret. After the female osprey becomes entangled in a fishing line and needs to be rescued, Callum is forced to ask his father for help. Mr. McGregor then calls in a wildlife expert named Hamish to free the bird. After treating a cut on the bird’s leg, Hamish bands her and fits a satellite transmitter harness to her back so that she can be tracked during her annual migration back to Africa. Iona christens the bird Iris.

Soon, the entire McGregor family is in on the secret. They help by remodeling the treehouse platform into a proper observation room with a roof and walls. Callum and Iona watch the birds all summer as they raise their hatchling. The children know that Iris will leave for her migration weeks before her mate or chick. In late August, Iona falls ill but makes Callum promise to look after Iris. The next day, Iona dies of a meningitis infection. Callum is heartbroken but intends to keep his promise to Iona. Soon, his friends Rob and Euan see the male osprey fishing in the loch, and Callum confides the secret to them.

Using tracking software, the boys eagerly keep tabs on Iris’s flight path until she arrives in The Gambia, Africa. When her signal disappears for several days, Callum grows worried and tries emailing local agencies to search for her. He receives a reply from a 10-year-old hospital patient recovering from two broken legs. Her name is Jeneba, and her father is a fisherman. The people of her village find Iris, whose leg injury grew infected and rendered her too weak to hunt. She is treated and released, but Jeneba herself has an infected leg that might need to be amputated. Through a string of coincidences, Callum and his friends find a way to raise money for Jeneba’s surgery, and she flies to England to have several operations. By the time spring returns, Jeneba is walking again. She arrives in Scotland to visit Callum just in time to see Iris return to her nesting site on the McGregor farm.