Nine-year-old Riley travels to South Africa to help his Uncle Max, a conservation biologist, track and count wild animals.

Nora helps her grandfather mow the field by watching for little animals in the tall grass and warning him to circle the horses and mowing machine around them.

As she grows through the first years of her life in the Catskill Mountains of New York, a peregrine falcon called Frightful interacts with various humans, including the boy who raised her, a falconer who rescues her, and several unscrupulous poachers, as well as with many animals that are part of the area's ecological balance.