Second half of the 17th century, the golden age of piracy. England and Holland are waging a war for naval supremacy, and in war all means are fair. The English captain Sir Francis Courtney was given royal permission to pursue, or simply plunder, enemy merchant ships. He patrols the waters off the coast of South Africa with his seventeen-year-old son Hal. The war caravel Courtney hunts a Dutch galleon coming from the East Indies and loaded with gold, precious spices and rare wood. A trophy like this can bring a fortune! And so the galleon is boarded, but the pirate’s happiness is fleeting - soon Sir Francis and Hal fall into the hands of ruthless enemies... The novel “Birds of Prey” chronologically opens the epic about the indomitable Courtneys, whose motto is: “I will endure.”

The book was also published under the title “Vultures” translated by D. Arsenyev.