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inTRODUCTIOn 
 
 Interest in the noble art of falconry continues. Though there is 
 but a select group of falconers in this country who consistently fly 
 hawks of one sort or another, there is a second and larger group who, 
 for want of a better term, can be called "intermittent" falconers. The 
 third and largest group consists of those who may never have taken 
 an eyess nor trapped a haggard but who hold a great interest in 
 hawking — and the art and literature of the sport. (These three groups 
 total over 1500 in the United States) . Interest also persists in England, 
 Germany, Austria, and other foreign countries. 
 
 A paucity of authoritative books on the subject has been an im- 
 portant deterrent to revival of hunting with trained hawks. In 1950 
 the Carnie reprint of Bert's Treatise was completely sold in less than 
 a year. It is hoped that making Freeman's work available in this new 
 edition will, in some measure, fill an obvious need. 
 
 William Robert Hecht 
 
 December 1, 1954. 
 
Hooded Peregrine on the Block. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY; 
 
 TO WHICH IS ADDED, 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 GAGE EAELE FEEEMAN, M.A. 
 
 (" Peregrine " of "The Field"). 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HORACE COX, '346, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 1869. 
 
Illustrations and Decorations 
 in tkis Edition 
 
 Rickard Pkilip Grossenkeider 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 Preliminaries page 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Peregrine Falcon (Hack) 8 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Castings — Hooding — Flown to the Lure—" Waiting On " — Use 
 and Abuse of Pigeons 16 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Partridge and Grouse Hawking, with some Comments on 
 '* Carrying," Markers, Wood Pigeons, &c 24 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Haggards with Game — Chickens and Eyesses— Heron-hawking 
 — Rook-hawking — Magpie-hawking — Pewits — Wild Ducks 
 — House Pigeons 32 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Other Flights— The Jerfalcon— Merlins— The Goshawk— The 
 Sparrowhawk— The Bath— Imping— Coping — The Brail — 
 Moult— Diseases — Haggards — Lost Hawks— Live Pigeons — 
 Conclusion 40 
 
viii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 First Experiences with Kestrels, Sparrowhawks, Merlins — 
 Early Notes on flying the Merlin — My old Enthu- 
 siasm page 53 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Sport — Hawks frightening Game from the Land — Permission 
 to fly at Grouse — Black Cloud 61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Storm Cloud — The Princess — Islay — Nearly blinded— An Appeal to 
 the Generosity of Sportsmen 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Some trifling Anecdotes 75 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Is chiefly on the Goshawk 81 
 
TO 
 
 TWO OP HIS FRIENDS, 
 
 WILLIAM BRODRICK, ESQ., 
 
 OF LITTLE HILL, CHTJDLEIGH, DEVON, 
 
 TO WHOSE KINDNESS HE WAS LONG AGO INDEBTED FOB INSTRUCTIONS 
 IN THE ART OF FALCONRy, 
 
 AND TO 
 
 PHILIP L. BROCKLEHURST, ESQ., 
 
 OF SWTTHAMLEY PARK, STAFFORDSHIRE, 
 
 WHO GAVE HIM 
 THE OPPORTUNITY OF PRACTISING IT 
 ON HEATHER, 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 IS DEDICATED, WITH GRATITUDE AND REGARDS, BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARIES. 
 
 When, at the end of May last, I said " Good-bye " to Falconry as 
 a writer on the subject, I was not prepared for the demand which 
 was afterwards made for a practical treatise. That demand, how- 
 ever, induced me to appear again, for " positively the last time ; " 
 and I now offer my readers in a volume of " The Field Library ** 
 what I lately offered them in the paper itself, some few, but I trust 
 thoroughly practical, chapters on the Art of Falconry. 
 
 I make no further preface, for my object is to keep entirely to the 
 subject before me, beginning at the beginning, placing myself aa 
 much as possible in the position of a person who knows nothing of 
 falconry, and trying to present such a treatise to my readers as I 
 desired many years ago to obtain for myself. 
 
 Let me suppose, in the first place, that a man has some sort of 
 floating feeling that he should like to see the falconry which he has 
 read of in the " Waverley Novels," in some old book of British sports, 
 or has heard of, for some years, as being really now carried out in 
 this country. Let me suppose, further, that he is inclined to take up 
 the matter himself. 
 
 He will want a tutor ; and the first questions probably which he 
 will ask are, " What sort of hawks should I have, and where can I 
 get them ?" 
 
 I answer— What is the character of your country ? — what expense 
 do you care to go to ?— have you a manor of your own ; or, if not, 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 have you friends who will give you pretty frequent permission ? 
 Because the kind of country, the depth of pocket, the courtesy of 
 friends, are all very necessary elements in this as in many other 
 sports. 
 
 If you are rich, and have opportunities for hawking game, and 
 wish to hawk it, engage a professional falconer ; but take care that 
 he is a man accustomed to ^'ctme-hawking. If you are a poor man, 
 intending to hawk game, and having some opportunity of doing so, 
 strive to know some good falconer, who will really show you the 
 thing ; and also — if I may venture to say so — read these chapters, 
 which are, honestly, the result of long experience. 
 
 I need hardly speak of the character of country to a rich man, 
 for he can most likely command countries of different character ; 
 but the man who can only hawk here or there will certainly want 
 to know, at any rate, what birds not to keep. 
 
 Let us suppose that he has no game — no rabbits even — but that 
 there is an open common near him affording rooks, magpies, 
 pigeons, larks. Not the goshawk then ; his hawks are the peregrine 
 and merlin. Does he live near moors on which he can hawk ? Still 
 the peregrine. On fairly-open partridge ground ? The peregrine 
 still. But the goshawk is the bird for a very inclosed country ; 
 and, should he care to fly the sparrowhawk, he may add that. 
 
 This is just a rough and general answer to the question, " What 
 sort of hawks a man ought to have ? " And now we come to the 
 second point : " How is he to procure them ? " 
 
 As to the peregrine, I can only say generally that the species breed 
 on high and dangerous rocks, both by the sea and inland ; and that 
 young birds are obtained by falconers, very frequently from Scot- 
 land, either from a personal friend or through John Pells, of Laken- 
 heath, Suffolk, or Robert Barr, Brandon, Suffolk. It is a difficult 
 matter to procure goshawks ; but they may occasionally be 
 got from one of the professional falconers, or from the Regent's 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 3 
 
 Park Gardens. As a rule they are imported either from France 
 or Germany. 
 
 Merlins are found on the moors. They build on the ground, but 
 are not often offered for sale. Mr. Pape, of Newcastle- on-Tyne, 
 sometimes gets them for his customers. 
 
 Sparrowhawks are easily procured. The gamekeeper of a wooded 
 manor is almost sure to be able to help the falconer. 
 
 Hobbies are so rare that it is hardly worth while to mention them ; 
 but, if procured, they should be treated like merlins. 
 
 The jer-falcons can be obtained from Iceland, Greenland, or 
 Norway, by sending over a falconer to catch them. 
 
 Peregrines are worth about 30s. each as soon as tjiey are taken 
 from the nest, falcons being rather more valuable than tiercels. 
 Goshawks, untrained, cost about ^4 each, the females being the 
 more valuable. Merlins should not exceed 6s. or 7s. each when they 
 leave the nest. Sparrowhawks cost what you like to give for them, 
 say half-a-crown each. As for hobbies, valuable chiefly for their 
 rarity and beauty, I can mention no price for them. In the lan- 
 guage of shopkeepers, they are " fancy articles " altogether. 
 
 Trained hawks vary in price in proportion to their merits. A first- 
 rate grouse-hawk is, in my opinion, worth ten guineas ; a bird entered 
 only to pigeons, .£5. I am speaking of the peregrine in both these 
 cases. 
 
 Another question which the beginner will ask — and it is rather a 
 comprehensive question — is, " Where am I to keep my hawks; must 
 I fasten them up by the legs, or put them in a large room, or what 
 must I do ?" There are other questions equally important — coming 
 in a measure from the last — such as, " What do you mean by jesses, 
 hoods, swivels, leashes, blocks, perches, and so on ? " Again, " On 
 what are hawks to be fed ; how much should they have at one 
 meal ? " " What is meant by all these terms which you falconers 
 write about so glibly, ' waiting on,' and such like ? " 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 It will be found that I shall answer all these questions in this 
 little treatise, and most of them in this chapter. 
 
 In bad weather and during winter nights hawks should be under 
 cover. Fastened to blocks as they are, they have no means of 
 getting their blood warm by exercise, and weather which would 
 not injure them at all when at liberty might destroy them in con- 
 finement. A shed is the best, and usual arrangement. It 
 is easily made where there is a long wall to serve as a back ; 
 and it is proper that it should face the morning sun. A line of 
 thick, low shrubs, planted in front, will in some degree keep off 
 the wind. The ground under the shed should be six inches deep in 
 sand, and good straw must be placed round each block, but not 
 touching it, so as to protect the bird's wings when she bates. Every 
 peregrine must have a space of eight feet square — mine have even 
 more— thus the shed undoubtedly takes up a great deal of room ; but 
 an unused loft will do. Straw is necessary on boards as well as on 
 sand ; and sand must be placed on boards immediately round the 
 blocks. Hawks may be kept in pitch darkness on a horizontal pole, 
 and in this way they are often placed very near together ; but I should 
 never think of adopting the plan myself, except in a case of emer- 
 gency. In fine weather they are put out on the lawn. 
 
 Peregrines and merlins are generally kept on blocks ; goshawks 
 and sparrowhawks on bow-perches. 
 
 The peregrine's block is a piece of wood the shape of a sugarloaf, 
 with the top cut off. It is about twelve or fourteen inches in 
 height, and has a spike at the base, which keeps it firm in the 
 ground — a most important matter when blocks are placed near each 
 other on a lawn, or when they are under the shed, because the birds 
 would make sad work with their neighbours, if their legs got fastened 
 to each other's leashes ; and they would injure their plumage if they 
 could drag a block from its place in the shed, and so bring them- 
 selves too near the walls. The points of their wings when they 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 5 
 
 bate must not touch anything but the straw or grass, certainly not 
 the sides of a shed. If the blocks are at any time placed in a loft, 
 holes must of course be made through the boards for the admission 
 of the spikes. 
 
 My blocks are formed of two pieces of wood neatly joined, in 
 order to make it possible to have a large ring running in a groove 
 round the base, on which moves a smaller ring, and to that the leash 
 is fastened. But an ordinary staple driven into the side of the 
 block will do. 
 
 The goshawk's how-perch — upon which a peregrine may be placed 
 if necessary — is simply a tough bough or sapling, bent to something 
 like half a circle, and having a large ring running on it for the 
 leash to be fastened to. A piece of wire should keep it in the form 
 of a bow, leaving, however, plenty of length at the points, so that 
 they may be made very fast in the ground. Should an accident 
 happen, and one end come out, the wire will save the escape of the 
 bird. It may be used under a shed, but it then obviously requires 
 considerable room. A partition, too, must screen the sight of an 
 immediate neighbour from the observation of a goshawk. 
 
 A hawk has a jesse on each leg. Jesses are made in this way : 
 Take a narrow strip of moderately stout, but not harsh, leather, 
 six or seven inches in length, cut it from a point, till (getting 
 broader) at less than an inch from the point you have the breadth 
 of not half an inch of jesse. Keep that breadth for an inch or more, 
 then gradually narrow to less than the third of an inch ; but, as you 
 get pretty near the other end, widen a little. Why, " that's a thing 
 that no fellow can understand." Still, I would take leather, a 
 knife, and a board and try. At the broader end make a slit not far 
 from the point, make another slit an inch from that, and a third 
 slit at the other end of the jesse. Grease the jesse. 
 
 Get someone to hold the bird. Take the end of the jesse that has 
 two slits, and, putting it round the hawk's leg, pass the point 
 
6 
 
 PEACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 through the second slit, and the other end of the jesse through the 
 first. Draw tight. The slit at the other end has nothing to do with 
 this arrangement ; it is only made that the jesse may be fastened to 
 the swivel. 
 
 The swivel — as also his first jesses, if the young falconer is wise — 
 will be procured from Mr. Pells. Pass the end of the jesse through 
 one loop of the figure 8, and the other loop through the slit in the 
 jesse. Draw tight, so that the jesse binds only one loop, and does not 
 interfere with the turning of the swivel. 
 
 The leash is a strip of whit or other stout leather, formed of one 
 piece, and yet having a button at one end. It is passed through the 
 vacant loop of the swivel, and the thin end is attached to the staple 
 or ring of the block. 
 
 Hoods are made on blocks, and I have made them myself ; but 
 I would advise the beginner to procure them from Lakenheath, 
 taking care to mention for what species of hawk they are wanted, 
 and whether for falcon or tiercel. 
 
 As for the glove, worn on the left hand by European falconers, it 
 must be procured from anyone who will undertake to make it. A 
 very stout gardening glove of the gauntlet shape does very well — 
 at any rate, for feeding and ordinary occasions ; and beware of using 
 anything very gay or unusual in which to show off before your 
 friends, for some hawks will not let you take them up on a glove 
 very different from the one they have been accustomed to. 
 
 The Ime may be either dead or alive. The dead lure is a forked 
 piece of wood, weighing a couple of pounds or more, covered with 
 leather, if you like, and having the wings of birds fastened to it. 
 Holes are bored through it for the convenience of tying on the food. 
 I generally nail a piece of red cloth to some part of it. The live 
 lure is simply a pigeon on a string. Don't tie string to his legs, for 
 it will cut them, but use slip-knot jesses of soft leather, and be sure 
 he is secured by both legs. Very high-fed and snooessfol game 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 7 
 
 hawks sometimes decline to take the smallest notice of the dead 
 lure, and must in that case be taken down with the live one. 
 
 Mr. Pells will provide hells ; the worst of them is that they soon 
 lose their tone, unless the falconer cares to be at the trouble to take 
 them off after hawking ; they are injured, I think, on the block. I 
 bought some excellent little ferret bells the other day at Malvern, 
 one of which I have now on a tiereel. It is possible to make bells 
 out of one piece of metal, but I have never been fortunate enough 
 to get such. Neither could I ever find any small enough for merlins. 
 They are fastened to the hawk's legs (one to each hawk) by small 
 pieces of leather called hewits. Take a thin strip two or three 
 inches in length, cut to a point at each end. Pass it through the 
 proper part in the bell. Eather near one end of the strip cut a slit 
 (call it the " short "), not so near the other end cut another slit (call 
 it the "long"). Put the leather round the hawk's leg; pass the 
 " short " through the " long," and the " long " through the " short." 
 Draw tightly. 
 
8 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PEREGRINE FALCON (hACK). 
 
 The falconer may receive his young hawks either when they are 
 covered with white down, or a few days before they can fly, or 
 when they are pretty strong on the wing. In the first case, he 
 will very likely lose them by cramp, or, if not, he will probably 
 be plagued with screamers ; in the second he will be fortunate ; 
 in the third not quite so fortunate. But he must remember that 
 everything does not depend upon when he receives the hawks ; 
 the point is, when were they taken ? They may have been taken in 
 the down, when far too young to be removed from the eyrie, and 
 yet he may have received them when they were birds just about to 
 fly. And it is sometimes difficult to command the proper time 
 for their removal from the crags ; for, if they don't come through 
 your friend's keeper, if the eyrie is open to plunderers generally, the 
 probability is that jealousy and fear of his neighbours will induce 
 someone to take them too soon : just as our old friend Paley says, 
 in the matter of the cherry tree in the hedge-row, " It can be of no 
 use to anyone, as each person would rather gather the fruit for 
 himself before it is ripe, than lose it altogether by leaving it to 
 another." 
 
 I have mentioned just now the very strong objection there is to 
 taking the hawks too soon ; but there are objections, though not 
 nearly so strong, to taking them too late. If the nestlings are so 
 forward that they have to be run down — the thing has been done, 
 though the nature of the ground sometimes makes it impossible — by 
 the time they reach you they will be tolerably strong birds. And 
 then there is a considerable delay before it is safe or possible to put 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 9 
 
 them out to hack, during which they mature most rapidly. There 
 is a good deal of tact required in putting them out at all, and, when 
 they are out, they must not remain at liberty very long. 
 
 If I have a reader who literally knows nothing of falconry, will he 
 oblige me by waiting for an explanation of the term " hack," whilst 
 I write one or two more sentences about it, and things belonging 
 to it? 
 
 I think, then, this, that birds taken from the nest less than a week 
 before they can fly, and reaching you a day or two before flight, are 
 taken and received at exactly the right time. There is no danger of 
 cramp, and none of s8teaming (artificially brought on) ; there is no 
 wasting the precious days of the first powers of flight by keeping the 
 birds immured while they are made acquainted with the lures ; there 
 is no shortening the period of hack, because the birds are so old that 
 they can prey for themselves easily when they have been out a 
 fortnight. And now for " hack" itself. 
 
 Hack ia the state of liberty in which eyesses are kept for 
 some little time before they are trained. It is managed in this 
 way: 
 
 When the young birds are received, they are at once (unless 
 excessively young) supplied with bells and jesses j and in any case 
 they are put on a platform some four feet high, which is erected in 
 the comer of an outhouse — an empty loft or an unused coach-house 
 answering the purpose very well. When they thoroughly know the 
 lures, and will come down from the platform to them, the door is 
 opened, and they are allowed to fly. They wiU return at feeding times. 
 
 Let us suppose the first case, viz., that very young hawks have 
 reached you. There is time enough to put on the bells and jesses, 
 for hack bells are much larger than flying bells, and would only 
 distress such small birds. Put plenty of clean straw on the plat- 
 form, which should have sides of two or three inches high, with hori- 
 zontal bars touching their tops, on which the birds will perch ; and 
 
10 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 make yonr gnests as snug as possible. Cut np raw beefsteak into 
 small pieces, and feed with a rather blunt stick or strong straw. 
 Vary the diet with pigeon, hen, and sometimes rabbit. The last 
 is not supporting, but is an excellent change amongst stronger food, 
 and is used in the real eyrie. I have looked into that nursery larder 
 myself. You may feed these very young birds three times a 
 day, but twice a day will soon be sufficient. If you rear them, I fear 
 — as I have already said — they will turn out screamers,* and make 
 your head ache in after days. Also they may grow up with sodden- 
 looking eyes, and without the life and briskness of birds taken at 
 a later period. At any rate, all these things often happen when 
 shepherds and such people have taken the nest too soon, in order to 
 be well beforehand, and have kept the birds themselves for a fort- 
 night or more, feeding them, no doubt, on all manner of filth. There 
 would be one advantage perhaps to the young falconer in having 
 birds of this sort — he could have no possible difficulty in putting 
 them out to hack. They would become perfectly tame ; they would 
 go, step by step as it were, from the inside of the outhouse to its 
 roof, from its roof to the house-top, and so on ; and they might be 
 out at hack a very long time. 
 
 Take the second case, in which the birds reach you in their best 
 stage. Bell and jesse them at once ; place them on the platform ; 
 feed them with the stick or the end of your finger, as they will bear 
 either, for the first two days, sounding a whistle the while, as 
 indeed you should do in our first case. Then lose no time in 
 introducing them to the lures, which place on the platform, so held 
 or tied that they can't be dragged into a comer, and the meat eaten 
 in the dusk. Stand by during the meal, and now and then offer your 
 tit-bit of steak at the end of a straw. That, however, is not of 
 
 * This, however, is not invariably the case. Not long ago I heard of a 
 bird taken from the nest when very young which did not scream at all. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 11 
 
 much practical good in one way, for, do it as you will, the birds will 
 most likely have to be taken up with the bow-net eventually. 
 Stm, it must rather tend than not to give them confidence, and to 
 prevent " carrying " in after times. Very soon they will fly down to 
 the lures on the ground, and eat eagerly. That will do. Open the 
 doors and let them out. They will perhaps be hours before they 
 leave. Mind they are not frightened just as they take their depar- 
 ture. Take care to be ready at the feeding times, on the lawn or in 
 the neighbouring field, with your lures and whistle. Eight in the 
 morning and six in the evening will do ; but, as they get older, it is 
 as well to feed them sooner in the morning, to prevent them preying 
 much for themselves. 
 
 The third case is rather difficult. Birds come to you which would 
 fly for half a mile if you were to let them out. Well, I think still 
 the platform. If possible, get someone to spend some time with 
 them J and the window had better be protected by perpendicular, not 
 horizontal, bars of wood. They must not be let out till they know 
 the lures thoroughly, though a good deal of time has been lost. Still 
 they may make excellent birds. I would rather have one of them 
 than three taken too early. If birds come with their feathers the full 
 length, able to fly well, though it is difficult to know what has been 
 done with them a week or two before you had them, and how it is 
 possible they are so forward, they may be put on blocks on the lawn, 
 tamed to a certain extent by carriage on the fist, even broken to the 
 hood, cmd then turned out to hack. But they should be turned out 
 to hack in a particular way. For two days before they are set at 
 liberty give them a live pigeon at the block, in some place where the 
 feathers will not be considered a nuisance — in the field near your 
 garden for instance. I prefer white pigeons for the purpose. Let 
 all the feathers remain. On the third day set the hawk at liberty- 
 he not knowing it— while he is eating the first part of a third pigeon. 
 This is easily done by having his jesses simply hooked to a spring 
 
12 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 swivel, which is fastened to your glove by a bootlace, or soinethinar 
 that looks better if you like. You then unhook the swivel, and leave 
 him on the pigeon, which I need hardly say is fastened by a short string 
 near the block. Put a pigeon out alternately with the dead lure 
 every night in the dark, or before daylight in the morning, and you 
 may keep your bird at hack a fortnight or more, especially if the 
 hack-bells are pretty heavy; for she will come in the morning. 
 Feed in the evening too. 
 
 Indeed, I may as well mention here a plan which, such as it is, I 
 originated, and which I have found very successful with older birds. 
 I fly my hawks in my own neighbourhood, and therefore I have the 
 following means of keeping them about. I have a block in my field 
 near the house, to which I fasten a live pigeon. A young hawk, 
 just before it is flown at game, is put up and brought down to this 
 pigeon; it is fastened to the block, and allowed to eat the bird. 
 Remember, also, that it has been flown at hack in the neighbour- 
 hood. The arrangement may be*^ repeated ; and, that having been 
 done, T think you are quite safe as regards the hawk coming home, 
 should she be out all night on a grouse, which she has killed where 
 you are not able to find her. In such a case, put down your live 
 pigeon at night, and be up by daylight ; she will be on it. This I 
 call my "live hack." The dead lure will not do for successful 
 game hawks, which always look for blood ; at any rate, it must be 
 used (I still, of course, speak about the lost hawk and live hack) 
 very sparingly. There is some danger in hawks being out all night 
 in the spring or early summer, but even then they will generally 
 come to the live hack. It has saved me an immense deal of trouble 
 — the trouble of going for miles shouting and throwing up lures.* 
 
 Hawks in our first case, let out to hack when perfectly tame, may 
 
 * If a lost hawk should not return to the live hack, it must be looked for 
 at daylight close to the place where it was last seen. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 13 
 
 be kept tolerably tame for some weeks, and may even be taken up 
 on the lures without the use of a net. But to ensure this you must 
 stand close to them every time they are fed, and it is well to give 
 them a juicy bit of meat from the hand now and then as they are 
 feeding. Hawks in our second or third case almost always require 
 the net, though you may approach some of them within a few yards. 
 The wildest, however, will make very considerable tact necessary. 
 A long string must be used, put perhaps through a stone wall, or 
 some other fence, so that they can't get even a glimpse of you as 
 you puU. 
 
 Before describing the bow-net, with which hack hawks are taken 
 up, I must give a hint as to the care required in letting out hawks 
 in out second case. They should be induced to come out, when 
 decidedly hungry, to lures just out of the place in which they have 
 been kept ; there let them gorge themselves, taking care, as I said 
 above, not to alarm them while they are leaving the neighbourhood 
 of the outhouse for the first time. They should fly quietly off to 
 short distances, and even then it may be necessary to look them up 
 at feeding time, and perhaps go to them for the first day. 
 
 The how-net is this : a net fastened to two semicircles of iron bar 
 (five- sixteenths in size), which are joined together at their ends by 
 simple hinges — mere loops, in fact. When the whole is open, it 
 should measure full three feet from hinge to hinge, and four 
 feet and a half across the other way. To set it, peg down one 
 half ; throw back the other half over it, tucking the net in close and 
 neatly. Fasten a long and strong string to the iron of the move- 
 able half, but not quite in the middle. Draw an imaginary line from 
 one hinge to the other ; and just within that line, and a little nearer to 
 the side on which the string is not fastened, place a hooked peg firmly 
 in the ground. To this a pigeon is made secure with very short 
 jesses ; or perhaps the lure, well furnished with meat, in one place 
 only, is made quite immovable. Take a light peg, and, putting it 
 
14 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 only a very little way in the ground, let it hold the string well away 
 from the pigeon or lure— of course on the side where it is fastened. 
 Thus, when a hawk is feeding, even should he drag the whole length , 
 of the pigeon towards the string, he will not make it impossible for 
 you to pull, because he will not be so near the string as to receive 
 an injury from it when it is jerked. Take care also to pull a little 
 towards the side on which the string is tied. It is a good plan to strew 
 some pigeons' feathers over what little is seen of the net, especially 
 if you are catching a very wild hawk. Practise a pull or two before 
 you finally set and leave the net, for anything like a mistake may 
 make the bird very shy the next time he comes. When he is caught 
 let some one hold him firmly across the shoulders with both hands 
 whilst you turn the net over, and either hook the jesses to a spring 
 swivel on your glove, or hastily place a leash through the sHts for 
 the time being. Of course, hood at once. 
 
 I think that hack is necessary ; certainly I should not care to 
 train and enter a hawk to such a quarry as grouse which had not 
 been so flown. By hack muscles are strengthened, and the birds 
 made clever and adroit in their turns and stoops. With regard to 
 its length, that must depend upon the age of the birds when you 
 received them. As I have said, hawks which creep out to the roof, 
 so to speak, quite young and tame, may be out a long time— say six 
 weeks. But those which leave you when they are wild and forward 
 cannot be out so long ; certainly not as a rule, though it is possible 
 that you may find such birds so naturally docile that they may be 
 taken up in six weeks or even more. Falcons perhaps require a longer 
 hack than tiercels ; but keep all of them at liberty as long as you 
 can do so with safety. 
 
 The sort of country for hack is that which is wild, and free from 
 adverse guns ; you must have no human enemies on it. It should, 
 therefore, be without game ; and, for every reason, I think it 
 should be without much game— indeed, with as little quarry of 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 15 
 
 aDy sort as possible. However, there is doubtless a very great 
 advantage in flying where you hack, so that a case may occur in 
 which you must hack amongst game. But there are possibly some 
 advantages in that, as well as disadvantages. 
 
 In the next chapter I shall say something about hooding, train- 
 ing, &c., beginning at the point where we left the birds— just taken 
 out of the bow-net. 
 
16 
 
 TRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CASTINGS — HOODING — FLOWN TO THE LURE — " WAITING ON ** — 
 USE AND ABUSE OF PIGEONS. 
 
 The hawks are now taken out of the net and hooded. Let them 
 be placed hooded on their blocks for an hour or two ; when, if 
 their crops are empty, as they are pretty sure to be, they may 
 be carried, the hood being rapidly replaced the moment it is 
 taken off, and this continued for some little time. Take the hoods off, 
 the first night, in case of any castings being in the bird ; for no 
 hawk can cast through an ordinary hood fairly drawn, unless the 
 beak- hole is cut as no man ought to cut it. 
 
 I do not wish to pass by any term which may not be understood, 
 as though it were understood ; and when I have occasion to use any 
 such terms, I shall generally pause to explain them, knowing that 
 the educated falconer — if he should read this — or even the half- 
 educated falconer, will not be disgusted at finding all the rudiments 
 set down here for the benefit of those who are not falconers at all. 
 
 Castings are the egg-shaped masses of fur or feather which a hawk 
 ejects from the mouth several hours after he has finished his meal. 
 .They are of a very considerable size, and are supposed to take from 
 the stomachs anything improper ; certainly they are very moist, and 
 often rather slimy when new. They are, however, necessities, 
 because some feathers or fur must be eaten ; and, whatever a fox 
 may do in another "quarter" (and I have seen wool in the High- 
 lands in his excrement), a hawk can only get rid of such things 
 through the throat. A hawk in a good state of health should throw 
 castings that have scarcely any smell, and they should be well and 
 firmly wrapped, not loose and of no shape. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 17 
 
 To return. Your newly-taken hawk will have an opportunity of 
 casting, the hood having been removed ; and, if he is put on a soft 
 lawn, or with plenty of straw round the block, and is not frightened, 
 whatever bating there may be when daylight comes won't do him 
 the least harm. I used to be afraid of this, but I have found by 
 long experience that moderate bating, without a crop of food. Deed 
 not be feared. Carry the bird the next day, hooding and unhooding, 
 offering him after a time the leg of a fowl to pull at. Probably he 
 won't look at it ; he will only fly off your glove, and hang by the 
 jesses. Don't hold him too short : have your thumb and finger just 
 on the jesse side of the swivel ; he will take a little in time ; if he 
 won't come up himself, when he hangs put your right hand on his 
 breast and quietly lift him up. If he should absolutely refuse food 
 the first day (and you must only feed him on your fist), try him early 
 on the second ; if ho won't eat then, make him open his mouth in his 
 anger, and pop some pieces in, well down, at the end of a strong 
 straw, or not too sharp a stick. This is just to keep the stomach 
 in action. He will soon come to, and few hawks — eyesses of course 
 — will give you so much trouble. Try first to make him feed through 
 the hood, the beak-hole being very large ; but stop this practice as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 An eyess is a nestling hawk, differing from a haggardj which is an 
 old wild-caught bird. 
 
 In a few days you will have very much tamed the bird, and perhaps 
 have broken him to the hood — a thing, though, often done before the 
 bird is tame. Much depends upon the disposition of the bird ; and, 
 as to hooding at any rate, a great deal on your own adroitness. 
 But the aptitude for hooding does not make a falconer, as I need 
 hardly say. I can hood indifferently well, but not so well as one 
 of our professionals, who engages to hood a wild hawk, he, the 
 professional, being blindfold. That is very pretty; but if the 
 professional has nothing else to boast of — which he has — a mounte- 
 
 0 
 
18 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 bank might beat him. It is a manual affair only, of course perfected 
 by practice. Still, good hooding is very valuable— clearly, at any 
 rate, not at all to be despised, for you may harm a bird very much 
 by clumsiness, if you give your mind to it. 
 
 Perhaps it is difficult to write directions for hooding ; I wish it 
 could be seen. The allowing a bird to pull at meat through the 
 hood— -i.e., the hood being on — is a help in hooding and in taming ; 
 but, as I have just said, it should be done sparingly, for this reason : a 
 bird accustomed to pull through the hood may, when trained, bite 
 your glove when she is hungry, and that is a most tiresome habit. 
 My own practice, after a hawk has been taken from the bow-net, 
 has been simply to hood, put on a block for a couple of hours, carry 
 for an hour, keeping the hood loose, and replacing it before it has 
 been quite removed. At night the hood is taken off altogether, as I 
 have said. The hawk is taken from the block in the morning, 
 carried for an hour, constantly hooded and unhooded, made to pull 
 a littla at a fowl's leg through the hood, and for a few moments — 
 for some time, if possible — after it has been quietly slipped off. 
 She is then placed hooded on the block till you have a further 
 opportunity of carrying her. No castings must be given, therefore 
 the leg of the fowl must be stripped entirely of its feathers. If the 
 fowl is old, the leg will be full of fat ; cut that away. 
 
 Don't plague yourself with one hawk for more than two hours a 
 day, unless she is very tiresome. Take her by degrees amongst 
 company, having the hood ready to put on the moment she bates 
 wildly off your glove. Continue this sort of thing, and in less than 
 a week — sometimes in four days — the hawk will be well broken to 
 the hood. You give no castings, because for two nights, when you 
 are certain that her stomach is free from them, the bird should 
 sleep hooded. This may seem a royal road to breaking to the hood ; 
 but I think it will be found to answer with most hawks, unless the 
 falconer is clumsy, which I confess he may be from inexperience. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 19 
 
 In that case, a little more " pulling through " the hood, and a little 
 longer time, may be necessary. 
 
 When I said it is difficult perhaps to write directions for hooding, 
 I spoke of the dexterity which is gained so much by practice and so 
 little by books. But I must try to offer something. Take the hood 
 in your right hand (the hawk being seated on your left), and 
 hold the plume firmly and low down, either between the thumb and 
 forefinger, or between the first and second finger, but not near the 
 tip of the finger. In either case the position of the hood must 
 derive some firmness from the ball of the thumb, the hollow of 
 the hand, and the spare fimgers. In hooding rebellious hawks, 
 the spare fingers are so placed behind the hood as to catch the 
 nape of their necks when they throw their heads back ; in all 
 cases the movement is tolerably rapid. Newly-caught hawks, and 
 such as have been frightened with the hood, can sometimes hardly 
 be hooded at all, except by first-rate hands, till they hang from your 
 glove by the jesses, and then it is not easy ; someone is generally 
 enlisted to draw the straps tightly. However, that soon passes 
 away. A great matter is not to lose one's temper. How well I 
 remember a lady pupil of mine telling me (perhaps she may also 
 remember it if she should see these lines) that it took two strong 
 men to hold her falcon Mora when being hooded ! 
 
 But a hawk is not always, or often perhaps, ready to be put on the 
 wing again as soon as she stands the hood. Before it is safe to do 
 that, she must come well from the block, not only to the lure, but to 
 the fist, as a rule ; but this cannot always be insisted upon. She 
 ought to bate towards the lure when you swing it at a little distance, 
 shouting to her at the same time. A very great matter is to get on 
 with the birds as quickly as possible ; and if any of them are par- 
 ticularly troublesome, they must make a greater call on your time 
 than the others do. Indeed, they may have to lose some flesh ; for 
 
 remember that the benefit of hack begins to fade awa-y when hawks 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 have been confined a long time to the blocks. A week is enough for 
 some birds between taking up from hack and flying to the lure, but 
 others can hardly be got ready in so short a time. Three weeks is 
 certainly far too long. 
 
 When the birds— especially eyesses— are broken to the hood, they 
 need only wear it for an hour or more a day (except, of course, when 
 going to and from the field), unless, indeed, they are seen to bate 
 much from some cause or other. I don't say that they should miss 
 a day in being hooded ; if they do so, they get to dislike the hood 
 from too seldom wearing it ; but, assuming no dislike, then let them 
 sit barefaced. They soon get tame on a lawn by doing so, especially 
 if there are children and dogs about — agents, however, to be em- 
 ployed in moderation, as they must not tease or frighten the birds. 
 Hooded birds, it is clear, might just as well be away from society. 
 
 When a hawk, broken to the hood and made tame by carriage and 
 the presence of people, is put on the wing for the first time, she 
 must be decidedly sharp-set — i.e., she must have had only half a crop 
 about twenty-five hours before. I don't know how it is, but I have 
 almost always found that good fresh beefsteak — which must be 
 exceedingly nourishing — gives hawks which were fed on it yesterday 
 an appetite to-day. I fancy it must give a tone to the stomach, and 
 a sort of spvA-t to the bird's constitution. Hot birds — i.e., birds just 
 killed — though excellent, do not seem to me to leave such an appe- 
 tite as beef does. I give both, and now and then rabbit, but the last 
 not often, to hawks worked daily at grouse. Ifc is cooling, and not 
 unnatural food, as I have said before, and a nice change. 
 
 Well ; the hawk is on the wing to the lure. You have taken her, 
 as far as you can, f^om the neighbourhood of trees or stone walls. 
 Don't keep her too long on the wing the first time, or perhaps she 
 may sit on the ground : if not a dashing bird — if, in short, possibly 
 a bad one — she may do so in any case. Supposing she does, walk 
 up to her till she rises ; and on no account throw her the lure till she 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 21 
 
 is on the wing. I am speaking now of course only of this stage. 
 Eeward her well when you have lifted her on the lure. You don't 
 touch her, of course ; you only take the lure in your hand, just under 
 where she is eating, and fasten the jesses to the hook-swivel on your 
 glove, or to the leash, which you pass through their slits for the time 
 being. Detach the beef, fowl's leg, piece of pigeon, or what you have, 
 from the lure by a cut of your knife on the string, and hold it firmly 
 in your hand, well down in your grasp : this is simply to save you the 
 nuisance of weight in carrying a heavy lure in one hand. When she 
 has finished (but rather let her eat on her way), hood and take her 
 home ; but let her sit barefaced on her block, if you know that she 
 will sit quietly. If you think she won't, keep the hood on by all 
 means. Fasten her to the block before you take the hood off. 
 
 We have now made considerable progress, and the hawk is ready 
 for entering to quarry. The orthodox plan is to give her a pigeon 
 at the block, which she kills and eats ; and, the day but one after 
 this meal, to fly her at a young one. Now, the entering to pigeons 
 has its advantages and disadvantages. Amongst the former we 
 have the constant exercise and practice which the hawk gets by the 
 flights, and the many valuable lessons she may receive in " waiting 
 on." Let us look into this a little. 
 
 Waiting on expresses the action of a hawk circling above the 
 falconer, and waiting till he springs quarry. When a wide-ranging 
 dog is used, a good and practised game hawk will be seen to wait 
 more on him than on his master. The peregrine can't go up too 
 high. A bird that will " wait on " in the clouds, like the little falcon 
 Aurora, the property of the Count Alfonso de Aldama, and lately 
 flown at grouse in Scotland, can hardly be valued by such and such 
 a number of sovereigns — she is priceless. That bird, however, is 
 not an eyess, she is a wild-caught hawk, and of such I must say a 
 few words in one of these chapters. Most hawks do nothing like 
 this ; screamers keep close to the ground as a rule, and many o:^ 
 
22 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 the best birda don't always exceed 100 yards. But the marvellouB 
 advantage of high " waiting on " is obvious ; it commands a great 
 extent of moor, it often causes a cut over at the first stoop, and, in 
 any case, gives monstrous power and impetus. " Not to speak it 
 profanely," I declare that to see a trained hawk come out of heaven, 
 frequently with the zigzag of lightning, upon rapidly-flying grouse, 
 sends a something through my whole frame, so thrilling in its 
 pleasure, that I almost fancy, in some previous state of existence, 
 I must have been the real peregrine himself. 
 
 I am not forgetting our business, however, in these raptures. We 
 were speaking of the advantages and disadvantages of entering 
 young- hawks to pigeons, and one of the advantages was that they 
 may be made useful in the practice of " waiting on" — a term which I 
 paused to explain. They may be made useful in this way. You have 
 quarry in your hand ; and when a young hawk has kept well and 
 patiently above you for some little time (don't try her patience too 
 much), and you feel that the lure which she was called down to 
 yesterday is not enough reward, you have it in your power to give 
 her a. flight, to teach her, by a convincing proof, that if she will only 
 keep well above you, there shall not always be a lack of quarry. 
 This I think very important. Again, all young hawks will be ready 
 some time before the 1st of September, and generally before the 12th 
 of August. At what, then, are you to fly up to those dates, if not at 
 pigeons ? The lure will hardly be sufficient. 
 
 And now for the disadvantages. There is no quarry to which 
 hawks take more kindly or naturally than pigeons. They are very 
 soon wedded to them, and I have known tiercels, which have been 
 flown at pigeons up to the 1st of September, make such lazy 
 attempts at partridges that great trouble has been the consequence. 
 Perhaps a partridge has had to be netted, or some such device 
 resorted to, by way of entering, before any sport could be obtained. 
 And even with falcons, which are not so soon spoiled as tiercels, it 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 23 
 
 is necessary to be careful in the use of pigeons. When a falcon is 
 not entered to grouse till these birds are very strong, she will pro- 
 bably lose the first two or three she flies at. Then will come the 
 memory of the pigeons she killed easily, and you may see her, after 
 pursuing the game with no earnestness for a couple of hundred 
 yards, wheel back and leave them. Hawks differ, however, some 
 losing heart much sooner than others. 
 
 At any rate, do not let a young hawk be too successful with 
 pigeons. Give her some old blue rocks, with plenty of law, time 
 after time— not, however, till she has flown and killed a couple of 
 young ones— and when she comes back tired and disappointed, throw 
 up to her a brown chicken on the heather or stubble. 
 
24 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PARTRIDGE AND GROUSE HAWKING, WITH SOME COMMENTS ON 
 "carrying," MARKERS, WOOD PIGEONS, ETC. 
 
 I THINK it may be said that every young tiercel, in good health, 
 sharp-set, and not utterly wedded to pigeons, will fly partridges 
 the first time he sees them. And every falcon, the two first con- 
 ditions being kept, and whether she has been flown constantly at 
 pigeons or not, will go straight at her first grouse. If she should 
 kill, the pigeons will have done her no harm ; if she lose her quarry, 
 and that more than once, she will hanker after another with which 
 she managed better. 
 
 It is obvious that young hawks should be put on the wing above 
 young birds, when that is possible, the first time they fly game ; and 
 I must leave it to the falconer's conscience as to the precise date of 
 his hawk's first introduction to this quarry. For myself I have no 
 opportunity of doing anything but adhering strictly to the game 
 laws ; indeed, I hardly ever fly my first grouse so soon as the end of 
 August. It is necessary too, as I have said, that the hawk should be 
 really hungry ; while it is not only unnecessary, but likely to bo fatal 
 to success, that she should be in a state of famine. She must have 
 plenty of flesh and pluck, and be without pangs of hunger, or she 
 will keep close to the ground, or hang over your head, looking only 
 for the lure. Neither do I object to a moderate wind ; so far from 
 that, I think it very necessary to have it, especially if it be a warm 
 one. Birds like to feel it under them ; it gives them courage, and 
 makes high flying easy. It is a very good hawk that does not hug 
 the ground on a perfectly still day. A bright sun, however, will 
 , sometimes tempt birds up. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 25 
 
 Your dog has found partridges in a tolerably open country — it is 
 clearly a dead point (never mind if the country is not so very open) — 
 and you have unhooded and cast off a tiercel. The hawk has been 
 taught to " wait on " to the lure, and to the few pigeons you have 
 thrown up under him, and therefore he follows you to the point. 
 Don't be in too great a hurry ; let him have time to get up ; and 
 when you think he will go no higher, and when his head 
 is towards you, put up the birds as nearly under him as may 
 be. Perhaps he will take one at once, or he will " put them 
 in " (i.e., into cover), or will kill at some distance. If he kill at 
 once, keep everyone back but yourself, dogs too, and go up quietly, 
 and yet with confidence. Kneel down, or retire a little if he is 
 nervous ; indeed, should he seem fidgety, let him plume and break 
 into the bird a little (and this will probably take longer than you 
 imagine). Then lift the partridge firmly in your left hand, the hawk 
 remaining upon it ; secure him, feed him up with beef, or the hot 
 leg of a chicken, given under the wing of the quarry ; then hood him, 
 and fly him no more that day. If he appear quite steady, pulling at 
 the head or neck, take him at once. 
 
 But we will now suppose that he has put the birds into some covert. 
 You had markers, no doubt, in the probable course of flight, though 
 a partridge flight is seldom very far. Let them rush, and do you 
 rush, dogs and all, to the spot, and get at least one of the birds up 
 again while the hawk remains overhead. There is no excuse in 
 partridge hawking for not having a hawk that will make his point, 
 as they say, over *' put-in" quarry, because the distance is short 
 enough for some one to be up in time with a spaniel, or long stick 
 at least, to get the birds out. If this can be done before the hawk 
 has left, for the first few times he puts in, he will gain confidence, 
 and will ultimately wait with considerable patience, even should 
 you be slow in your movements. In grouse hawking matters are 
 different, for the flight is often a great deal too far, and the ground 
 
26 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 too hilly, to make it possible to be up while the hawk remains. She 
 therefore comes back, and you beat again. (This only by way of 
 parenthesis.) 
 
 If the tiercel has killed at a distance, the markers will have been 
 useful, and you will go at once to your bird. 
 
 It may be necessary to take the hawk down to the lure before he 
 has killed (I mean after some failures), in order to move to other 
 ground ; but this should be avoided if possible, for, when he comes, 
 you can scarcely give him anything— "though you must give a little — 
 he having to fly almost instantly; besides, frequently calling a 
 hawk to the lure destroys his pitch, and, as he can hardly be fed at 
 all, makes him careless of the lure. An old bird will follow you field 
 after field till he does kill ; but be careful how you tire a young 
 hawk. Use your own judgment, and act according to circumstances. 
 A tiercel used to partridge hawking will kill you a brace and a half 
 or two brace in a morning ; but this is too many to take from a very 
 inexperienced bird. They should eat the head, or a couple of small 
 mouthf uls from the neck, each time. The moment that is done — and 
 it is perhaps done before you come up — hood the bird, and don't 
 snatch the partridge away first, for that will lead to carrying. 
 
 Carrying is a most tiresome fault ; but it is often, indeed almost 
 always, the fault of the trainer rather than of the falcon. Some 
 birds, it is true, seem to have a greater disposition to carry than 
 others ; and the smaller species of hawks (but we have not spoken 
 of them at present) are worse in this particular than the larger. It 
 is indeed a nuisance to find your bird pick up the quarry and make 
 off with it, perhaps for the distance of two or three hundred yards, 
 just as you approach your hand to seize it ; and the tamest hawks 
 may do this if they have been improperly treated. It is done from 
 no fear of the falconer— at least, from no fear of his presence ; the 
 hawk's only suspicion is that she is about to 'be robbed ; and she 
 has been robbed, no doubt. You have taken her off the food in a 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 27 
 
 careless way, or you have, at any rate, failed to make her like the 
 approacli of your hand by forgetting to give her dainty bits 
 from it while she was pulling at something pretty tough on 
 the lure. You may also have allowed her to fly away with 
 pieces of meat which you have imperfectly tied to the lure, or she 
 may have carried a light lure and gorged herself from it. All these 
 things provoke carrying. The greatest pains must be taken about 
 them, for you can have no peace with a carrying hawk. If she 
 should drag, but not attempt to fly with the pelt (or captured 
 quarry), the possibility is that she does not know she c&n Jly with 
 it. She has fortunately been used to heavy lures, and thinks, after 
 all, that she must feed where she is. Let us hope she will not eat of 
 the tree of knowledge. Still, even dragging is not the thing ; in some 
 hawks it never occurs at all, and, with proper treatment, it will 
 pass away with almost any. The best hawks I have had, the 
 highest flyers, those free from screaming, the most noble in every 
 way, have never seemed to know that there was suc-h a thing as 
 carrying ; at any rate, it never occurred to them that any respect- 
 able peregrine could be such a beast as to attempt it. 
 
 I have said something about partridge hawking, but not perhaps 
 quite enough. I have assumed that it is done with the tiercel as far 
 as I have gone, and I confess my experience leads me rather — but 
 not very much — to prefer the male bird in this sport. He is lighter 
 and quicker at the turn than the falcon, and possibly gets into his 
 speed a little sooner, if he is not high when the birds rise. But put 
 me up a rather small falcon in a little breeze, a hawk that has been 
 flown at grouse before, and that every fine day ; and if she is not as 
 good as any tiercel, the difference is not in the sex, but in some 
 accident. 
 
 If birds are very wild, and won't lie to a point at all, you have 
 your certain remedy with a high-flying hawk. Simply put him 
 up before you enter the field, and when he is at his pitch 
 
28 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 dash through it, getting the birds up as soon as you can. It is well 
 that he should know the dogs, which he will do in a wonderfully- 
 short time, if they are allowed by degrees to go near hia block when 
 he is unhooded. 
 
 So much for partridge hawking with the peregrine. We now come 
 to a nobler sport — we come to hill and heather, to longer flights, to 
 higher winds, to stronger exertion. We come to the peregrine falcon 
 herself, the female bird who is so much greater than her husband, 
 so much stronger, I think so much nobler. I will not say that 
 grouse have not been killed by trained tiercels, for I know to 
 the contrary; that they are often killed by wild tiercels there is 
 no doubt ; but I am utterly and entirely for the falcon in grouse 
 hawking, as the bird so easily entered to that quarry, and so 
 thoroughly to be depended on in flying it. There is no flinching 
 with the falcon, no seeming to slacken the pace as though she 
 were afraid of hui-ting her foot with the blow ; but there is down- 
 right, headlong, rapid, earnest, brave, honest, mighty chasing — 
 there is the very character of commanding power in every hiss 
 of her rushing bell, and in every stroke of her glorious wings. 
 She goes into battle knowing that she will conquer; she hurries 
 on the prize, as one who would only snatch her own ; she comes 
 down, an armed cruiser with all her sails, certain of the little 
 craft that is bounding so quickly before her. Surely she is the 
 queen of the wildernctja and of the sky, the ruler of every crea- 
 ture beneath, the servant of but one above her ! It is she to whom 
 the winds are nothing, the hail nothing, the lightning on the 
 mountains nothing— all these she defies ; but man is her master, 
 and I have seen her go out furiously at his bidding, or come 
 down gently to his feet, out of the very clouds of heaven. 
 
 For the first few weeks in Scotland, and for the first few days in 
 England, grouse will lie to a point. Wait for one, and put the 
 falcon up, as directed in partridge hawking. But when birds are 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 29 
 
 very wild, get a few beaters, put the hawk up in a likely place, and 
 when she is at her pitch get the grouse up as fast as you can. A 
 wide-ranging dog, especially if you don't mind spoiling him a little, 
 is most valuable for this work ; but then your hawk should be a 
 high-flyer. Consider the matter ! If she is not a high-flyer, and 
 birds are put up a couple of hundred yards from her, she has uncom- 
 monly little chance, especially after August. But, if she keeps a 
 hundred yards or more above you, or above the dog, his range may 
 be very considerable with great advantage ; and, indeed, the hawk's 
 presence in the air will help to keep the grouse down. With such 
 birds as Aurora he might range half a mile, for that matter ; but 
 then, if Aurora has any fault, it is that she is too good. She, from 
 her noble pitch, would fly, and probably kill, grouse sprung acci- 
 dentally at a very great distance ; she would kill out of reach of 
 markers' vision. The direction would probably be known, and, 
 with active men, she might be found in time ; but she might not be 
 found. , Then, unless she comes next morning to the live hack, there 
 is a chance of good bye altogether. It will be gathered, then, from all 
 this that the game must be put up under a good hawk quickly, while, 
 at the same time, neither dog nor beater should be so very far oS her 
 as to make the flight either impracticable or dangerous from its 
 distance. 
 
 Markers, I am pretty sure, are necessary in grouse-hawking ; 
 certainly they are necessary on anything but a very flat moor — they 
 are necessary with me here. The flight is soon over a hill out of 
 your sight ; the kill is in some ravine ; the bell is not heard till you 
 are very near : besides, the flight once over the hill, how do you 
 know whether it goes straight on, or turns to the right or to the 
 left, or (though this is rarely the case with game) comes quite back ? 
 Markers may not, and often do not, absolutely see the kill, but they 
 know whereabouts it is ; and if they see a " put in," there they are, 
 to get the grouse up again before the falcon leaves the place. Of 
 
30 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 course they should always be before your beat, and placed on the 
 highest points. If they know for certain that there is a kill, they cry 
 " who- whoop ! " and this brings the falconer to the spot ; if they are 
 uncertain, they wait for the falconer to speak to them, which he 
 will not do till he has stood still nearly ten minutes looking for the 
 return of the falcon. If she is not back in a shorter time than 
 that, she has killed. Then the marker near whom she flew is com- 
 municated with, and a search is made. It is often impossible for 
 falconer and markers to hear each other — at any rate to hear any 
 sentence, anything more than a falconer's cry. My markers, there- 
 fore, are instructed to point with one arm, just like a finger-post, 
 the direction of the flight, and to insure the news of " who- whoop ! " 
 reaching its destination by the throwing up or waving a hat ; 
 waving is the best, and it must upon no account be done except in 
 the case of a certain kill. If the hawk returns without success, she 
 will wait on over the falconer and his beaters, frequently higher 
 than she did the first time, and the process of beating is resumed. 
 
 The hawk should certainly be accustomed to some cry when the 
 grouse rises, as her head may possibly be turned from the game. I 
 shout, and so do the beaters, " Hooha, ha, ha ! " as loud as I can ; 
 the falcon sweeps round in a moment, and is in instant pursuit. A 
 cry may also be used to call her to you, such as "Hi away ! " A 
 loud and peculiar whistle, that to which she was accustomed at 
 hack, is the best ; only it rather bothers the dogs. 
 
 The directions given in partridge hawking as to taking up the 
 bird, and so on, are good here. You may kill two or three grouse 
 with a good peregrine, if you get up in time to prevent much eating 
 of the quarry ; and it is wonderful how long an eyess will stop on a 
 grouse without even much disfiguring it. I constantly find a quarter 
 of an hour or twenty minutes a mere nothing. 
 
 But then my birds are flown with a great deal of flesh on them. 
 I want weight, to carry them through wind, and to carry them 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 31 
 
 steadily. I also want force, and the perfection of health. My 
 friends tell me that I could not fly such fat birds were it not for my 
 live hack, and I believe them. 
 
 Wood pigeons are somewhat of a nuisance where they abound, 
 but a good game hawk will soon leave them alone, unless they come 
 very daringly near ; in a partridge country, where they are often 
 common, they soon save themselves in a wood, and the hawk returns 
 to "waiting on." In a very open country they afford excellent 
 sport ; they come sometimes to the moors for bilberries. I will 
 dismiss them here, as there is not anything very special to say about 
 the mode of flying them ; either falcon or tiercel will kill them. 
 House pigeons may of course be flown from the hand, and the place 
 of flying selected for its open country. Two hawks after a blue 
 rock make no despicable sport ; it is the coursing of the air. 
 
 But I must leave other flights and some other matters for the 
 next chapter. Grouse and partridge hawking I shall once more 
 notice, but only in a few paragraphs, and that when I speak of the 
 haggard. 
 
32 
 
 PTIAOTIOAL FALCONRY.' 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HAGGARDS WITH GAME — CHICKENS AND EYESSES — HERON- 
 HAWKING — ROOK-HAWKING— MAGPIE-HAWKING— PEWITS— WILD 
 DUCKS— HOUSE PIGEONS. 
 
 At the end of the last chapter I was led for a moment from game 
 to the wood pigeon : the truth was, the wood pigeon came necessarily 
 in my way as a bird which occasionally leads game hawks from the 
 right path, and, having once mentioned him, I thought I would 
 dispose of him for ever. I had not, however, as I said, quite done 
 with game-hawking. 
 
 The haggard peregrine, so good at herons and rooks, has lately 
 been flown with great success at game. Some of these wild-caught 
 hawks "wait-on" very high, and are always, from their long expe- 
 rience, good footers. But they are difficult birds to deal with. 
 Many of them have to be kept low in flesh, which is certainly a 
 misfortune, and their disposition to *' self -hunting ".is annoying. 
 But again, like Aurora (a havvk mentioned before), some of them 
 show excellent sport with grouse ; and no doubt the great objection 
 to them lies in the danger of their being lost. I wrote to Robert 
 Barr, the professional falconer, on this matter, not long since, 
 and I will give an extract from his letter ; after that, I shall 
 set down what I said to him in return. The extract is as fol- 
 lows : " Do not have haggards for game. I have one here. 
 She waits on well and high, and kills grouse first-rate — yes, 
 too well, as, if she goes out of sight, she has killed and eaten the 
 grouse before she can be found in these wild deep glens ; and, before 
 she is hungry, a grouse getting up under her, she will have it ; so 
 she is lost." He means that she will kill for herself without the 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 33 
 
 smallest trouble ; will take a second grouse almost before the first 
 is thoroughly digested, and so on : this being the case, you will 
 hardly have an opportunity of luring her, and not often one 
 of seeing her on the wing. He continues: "I repeat, never 
 have a haggard for game. I have had the best grouse-hawking 
 this year, and killed the most grouse of any year since I began 
 hawking ; but what is the consequence ? I have lost one haggard, 
 and two other passage-hawks" (a wild-caught hawk in the imma- 
 ture plumage is spoken of often only as a " passage-hawk," not as a 
 haggard) — all three as good as any man ever had, but out of their 
 place at game." 
 
 In answer to this I told him that I did not doubt he was right, and 
 yet I would try. I would get a wild-caught falcon, and do all I could 
 to enter her to my live hack ; then fly her at grouse in the neigh- 
 bourhood. But, after all, what can beat such eyesses as the 
 Princess and Islay, or many other nestlings which I have trained 
 and flown ? If I ever have the opportunity of flying a haggard at 
 grouse for any length of time, I will tell my readers the result. 
 
 I have now said all I intend to say about grouse and partridge hawk- 
 ing, except this hint. If an eyess should be very much disappointed 
 in flying game before she has killed any, I recommend the following 
 plan.* Before she declines fljing it altogether, let your markers have 
 each a brown chicken, about the size of the quarry, flown at ; and 
 if she should again *' put in " her bird where it cannot easily be 
 retrieved, let a chicken be thrown down to her in a string before she 
 attempts to leave the spot. She must then be allowed to gorge on it, 
 be hooded, and taken home. The string is necessary to prevent the 
 chicken creeping into covert ; but it must not be too much displayed. 
 As for the chicken itself, if it is a tolerable representation in colour 
 
 * It shoiild only, however, be adopted in extreme cases. See a caution 
 towaivis the end of this chapter. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 and size of the bird flown at, it will do ; for the hawk, never having 
 had such a bird in her feet, will easily be deceived. Of course, a 
 live grouse or partridge, as the case may be, would be the proper 
 thing ; but it is difficult to obtain these, especially the former. But 
 a good falconer, with fair material on his hands in the shape of 
 hawks — especially if he have a covey scarcely full-grown to begin 
 with — can have no occasion whatever for these artificial aids. You 
 should learn to swim without the bladders. 
 
 It is now high time to speak of other flights than those with grouse 
 and partridge. 
 
 Heron-hawking is the great sport, but I know it only from hear- 
 say, and not from practice. Whilst grouse-hawking, indeed, a falcon 
 of mine has more than once knocked a passing heron about, but I 
 have never killed one. Haggards are used for the sport, though I 
 think some eyesses would be equal to it ; indeed, some few have, at 
 odd times, killed herons. 
 
 Herons are hawked on what is called the "passage;" and not 
 long ago there was a club in Holland — the Loo Club — whose mem- 
 bers were very successful at this sport. By the "passage " is meant 
 the passing of herons from the trees on which they build to their 
 frog or fishing grounds, and the passing back again. Falconers are 
 stationed at convenient parts of this passage, down wind of the 
 heronry, on the look-out for returning birds, which are called 
 " heavy," because they carry food ; or some very daring man, with 
 an excellent hawk, may even venture upon a " light " heron — i.e., 
 one going out to fish ; but this is difficult and dangerous. I need, 
 perhaps, scarcely say that the falcon, and not the tiercel, is used for 
 this flight. 
 
 A quarter of a mile from the falconer, and a couple of hundred 
 yards or so in the air, is the greatest distance a falconer ought to 
 fly through — at any rate, as a rule. Herons have been killed with 
 more law, but not often. Off go the hoods of two falcons when the 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 35 
 
 heron, on his way home, has passed the falconer a little. He dis- 
 gorges his fish, ho turns and goes down wind, making rings all the 
 time in order to get above the hawks. They make rings too, and 
 larger ones than his. One hawk is above the heron ; she stoops, and 
 hits or misses ; in either case perhaps, but certainly in the former, 
 both birds descend a little ; but the second hawk has climbed up 
 and stoops in her turn. After some blows there is a catch, both 
 hawks "bind" to the quarry, and all three come down to the 
 ground. Just before the ground is reached practised hawks loose 
 their hold to save the bump, but make in again in a moment. 
 You must ride at this sport, and that down wind, as fast as 
 you can : the country is of course quite open. Danger to the 
 hawk exists on the ground, scarcely ever during the flight, though 
 even Sir Walter Scott has said so. If the heron is not hors de 
 combat when the falconer comes up, the neck must be seized, and 
 matters arranged as soon as possible. When heron hawks are rid- 
 den to, as they always should be, the heron is often found unhurt, or 
 not seriously hurt : in that case, the hawks are fed on hot pigeon, held 
 under a dead heron's wing, or even without that precaution if they 
 are well-entered and practised birds ; while the heron is restored to 
 liberty, to fight or fly another day, and occasionally with a piece of 
 copper bound round the leg, with the date, &c., of the capture — but 
 this not till the hawks are hooded. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that every peregrine falcon will fly a heron 
 the moment she sees him, or that one which does make for him at first 
 will stick to him all through. As a rule, a great deal of trouble is 
 taken to enter hawks thoroughly to this quarry, bagged herons 
 being necessary. 
 
 Rook-hawking is, to a certain extent, a copy of heron-hawking ; 
 though no rook can go up as a heron goes before a falcon, or a lark 
 before a merlin. I have killed with eyesses a good many old rooks, 
 and that in a very difficult country; but my friends generally use 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 passage-hawks for this flight. Let me give my own experience 
 first. I have found that there is a great deal of difference amongst 
 falcons in their care to fly rooks. Some birds, but they are won- 
 derfully in the minority, will go at them day after day, now losing 
 them in trees, and now killing them — disappointed time after 
 time, but sticking to them through everything. I speak of eyesses 
 of my own experience. Others will fly eagerly at first, but, though 
 they are tolerably successful, will give them up in time. And there 
 are falcons that will hardly look at them at all, and can scarcely 
 be brought to them even with bagged quarry. 
 
 However, most falcons, and some few tiercels, will fly rooks pretty 
 well to begin with. Of course I speak of strong dashing birds, not 
 tame things that have only been coddled ; and, if they have been 
 knocked about at grouse and wood pigeons, having been successful 
 with these, they are none the worse for that — I think better. 
 
 Of course there is no " waiting on " in this sport, as there is none 
 in heron-hawking, the hawk being flown from the fist ; but it might 
 perhaps be well, in some very few cases, to put the hawk up before 
 the flock rises: that must be left to the falconer's jadgment. 
 The ordinary thing is to fly during passage, for rooks have a passage 
 like herons. 
 
 If there are trees near, there should certainly be beaters, or a 
 " field," if you like to call it so. But trees are a great nuisance ; 
 and, without going into what would be strictly called a wooded 
 district, they may be so frequent as to make rook-hawking impos- 
 sible. Rooks always make for trees. Many a time have I nearly 
 run my life out, when I have not been well supported by others, or 
 there have been no others, to get a rook out of a tree while the 
 falcon remained. Stones won't always do it — not often : shouting 
 is of little more use. A pistol is the best thing, and there are 
 cases whefl even that requires a little shot over the powder. 
 A rook, however, as we all know, is very frightened at anything 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 37 
 
 like the report of a gun, and I have g:eneral]3' found powder 
 answer. 
 
 To keep hawks to rooks — and T learn this from my friends who 
 use passage-hawks ; I have not done it in my own practice — it is some- 
 times necessary to give them washed meat ; meat, in fact, soaked 
 for many hours in water, till it looks white and sodden. This is the 
 *' unbloody " crop ; the " bloody " crop, for which the wretched birds 
 must long, is only to come from the ropk itself. The yellow goes 
 from a hawk's legs and feet, and some of the gloss from her 
 feathers, under this regimen ; and, indeed, the falconers will say, 
 "This bird is not fit for rooks — her feet are yellow'^ The yellow 
 and the gloss are signs of health ; but it can't be helped, I suppose. 
 I never went into this kind of thing myself, and have been contented 
 with high-fed falcons (one taken out of several), that flew rooks 
 because they liked it. 
 
 Just to guard against any mistake, let me say that the yellow 
 does not appear on the cere (the wax-like formation above the 
 upper mandible), nor perhaps to its full extent on the legs and feet, 
 in very young eyesses. 
 
 I had one falcon that really liked the flesh of rooks, but this is 
 uncommon ; and it is a good plan, after the bird has broken into the 
 breast, to give a piece of nice beefsteak or a fowl's leg under the 
 rook's wing. Once, when the falcon I have alluded to was eating a 
 rook's breast, I saw a shot deep in it, which I of course took out. 
 The rook was in health and fat. I also once found a shot in a most 
 healthy hawked grouse while I myself was eating it. Supposing I 
 had given this bird to a friend as a hawked grouse, and he had 
 found the shot, what would he have said of me ? 
 
 Magpie-haivMng is a sport so well established among falconers 
 that I must not omit it. Tiercels are the birds for this cunning, 
 shifting quarry, as they can turn in a smaller space tlian a falcon 
 can, and are what may bo called '"handy." Eyesses are by far the 
 
38 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 most easily managed, and when in constant practice nothing can 
 beat them. This is certainly not a sport to be undertaken 
 singlehanded ; you can't go out with your tiercel on your fist 
 unattended if there is to be a hope of success — unless, indeed, in 
 unusual cases — for magpies, as a rule, are found in the neighbour- 
 hood of trees and hedges. There may be here and there a common 
 where they may be seen, and which is so broad that a hawk 
 may kill them before they can reach covert ; but, even if such 
 a place could easily be found, it would hardly be chosen for the 
 sport. What is wanted is a good grass country, tolerably free 
 from wood ; here and there a tree, large inclosures, and neatly-kept 
 fences. The magpie should have a refuge, in this place and that, 
 but no covert must be so great that he can be lost in it. The flight 
 should be run after by some, and ridden after by others ; for both 
 horsemen and footmen are very useful to drive the quarry from 
 a hedgerow, bush, or tree. When he takes to a hedge, let him 
 be well pressed from both sides of his position — i.e., let some 
 of the field be above and some below him, each party beating 
 and approaching the other. The moment he leaves he will 
 be stooped at, first by one hawk, then by another (for two are 
 used), and he will require the attention of several persons to 
 keep him from covert, or rather to put him out of it. 
 Once thoroughly in the broad open, he is easily killed. I need 
 not say he has no speed, for everyone knows that; but he has 
 cunning and adroitness almost beyond belief. Several magpies 
 may be taken in a day with a cast (two) of peregrines, or, indeed, 
 even with one hawk. With pewits trained hawks can do nothing. 
 They may fly them at first, but they soon give them up — the 
 dodging is too much for any bird ; and yet wild peregrines will 
 occasionally take them, and a man saw one of my hack hawks kill 
 one easily. But all trained hawks, except a few of the very best, 
 will do better by themselves— i.e., when they have left you for an 
 
PBACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 88 
 
 hour or two — than they will when you are in the act of flying 
 them. 
 
 I never flew a hawk at a wild duclc^ I am sorry to say ; but any- 
 one who has passed through anything like the falconry I have just 
 written about, will have no difficulty with this quarry. The falcon 
 should be used, eyess or haggard, and she might possibly want 
 entering. The danger ia of the duck diving ; but on marshes the 
 sport might be excellent. 
 
 I mentioned house pigeons above, but only in passing. If you can 
 get over the notion of having had them in your pocket or basket, 
 they will show excellent sport ; and there is no reason whatever 
 why a hawk thoroughly entered to game should not fly them. The 
 only delicacy is with those unentered. On the contrary, they exer- 
 cise a hawk famously, and make her practise all her stoops and 
 twists. Fly at them alternately with game, and welcome. But, 
 if you have no opportunity for game-hawking, you may 
 fall back on pigeons with advantage. I have often .amused 
 — nay, very much interested — myself and my friends by taking 
 the hawks from the blocks, and flying them at my dovecote 
 pigeons. Many a time hawk and quarry have been lost in the 
 clouds, for some pigeons ring beautifully ; and then the rush down 
 for home, when she has well beaten them in the air, is really 
 very fine, and I have seen hawks make magnificent practice while at 
 it. The misfortune is that after a time the pigeons refuse to stir 
 from the roof. 
 
40 
 
 r[tA(JTICAL FALCUNKV 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OTHER FLIGHTS — THE JERFALCON— MERLINS— THE GOSHAWK — 
 THE SPARROWHAWK — THE BATH — IMPING — COPING — THE 
 BRAIL — MOULT — DISEASES — HAGGARDS — LOST HAWKS — LIVE 
 PIGEONS — CONCLUSION. 
 
 There are of course a few flights with the peregrine besides those 
 which I have named, but the falconer, knowing others, will easily 
 manage them. Pheasants, for instance, may be taken with most 
 falcons, if found far enough from covert; and woodcocks may be 
 taken with either falcon or tiercdl, if excellent hawks, on a 
 moor, perhaps on the edge of a bank near a burn, where I have oc- 
 casionally found them. It must bo left to the falconer's judgment 
 in such cases whether he flies from the air or from the fist : a hawk 
 is of course in the best position when waiting on ; and, if the quarry 
 is well marked down, this is easily arranged. But woodcocks, as 
 all sportsmen know, are not always easy to find, mark them as you 
 will. 
 
 With the exception of a very few words which I may have to say 
 about haggards, I now with regret dismiss the peregrine, to make 
 room for other hawks. My space is full short. 
 
 Of the jerfalcon I know nothing from practice, and I shall not 
 enter here into the question of a difference of species between the 
 Iceland, Greenland, and Norway birds. I will only say that I 
 believe in it, and that in very good company. I was determined 
 not to write a line on natural history in what I intended for a purely 
 practical treatise on falconry ; and it will be found that I have 
 hardly written half a dozen such lines. The jerfalcons are used for 
 herons, grouse, rooks, hares, even for partridges, and they wait 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 41 
 
 on well. They will take hares fairly, especially with the assistance 
 of a rather slow and well-broken dog, just to keep the hare going ; 
 any mongrel will do.* They are magnificent birds — powerful of 
 course from their size, fairly tractable, swift, and moderately 
 successful. I am told the fault is in a want of quickness in the 
 turn, but they go very fast straight on end. I may have done them 
 injustice, but I speak of nothing of which I know nothing ; and I 
 am blindly bigoted : I am altogether for the peregrine. 
 
 Of merlins I know a great deal ; I can't be modest here, for I have 
 flown them year after year with very considerable success. I have 
 killed quantities of wild skylarks, many thrushes, a very few black- 
 birds, some ring-ouzels, and a great many house pigeons with them, 
 besides accidental pipits and such like. It is fortunate for me 
 that I have said a good deal about these little hawks in the first 
 chapter, of " How I became a Falconer." They are treated during 
 hack just as the peregrine is treated ; not allowed perhaps to 
 to remain at liberty quite so long, and taken up either by hand 
 or with the bow-net. They are delicate, and should be fed 'twice 
 a day — never on tough food ; neither must they be allowed to bolt 
 their food in large pieces. I have seen even a great screaming pere- 
 grine, always hungry, though eating half as much again as another, 
 lose her digestion for a whole day through bolting immense pieces 
 of beef. Beef chopped to a paste, with a little water, is excellent 
 for all hawks. Merlins, however, should have plenty of birds, alive 
 or dead ; if alive, take care they are not of a sort likely to draw the 
 hawk from the quarry at which she is in the habit of flying ; if dead, 
 beware of shot in them. Merlins need not be hooded much ; it is 
 better that they should not be. Great care must be taken to prevent 
 
 * Lord Lilford tells me that lie dislikes the Iceland birds : the Green- 
 landers are the second best; the Norwegian best of all. Icelanders he 
 considers sulky, and anything but clever. 
 
42 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 them "candying" — a fault to which they are peculiarly liable. A 
 thin rod, shutting up like a telescope, with a sort of claw at the end, 
 to place, but very carefully, upon the captured lark in the hawk's feet, 
 with a small ring* opposite the claw, to which a tempting pieoe of 
 beefsteak is fastened, helps the falconer sometimes. Unless badly 
 trained, it is only when the hand approaches very small quarry that 
 these little fellows will think of moving. Merlins are not taught to 
 " wait on," though they might be in a measure ; it is not wanted for 
 their flights. I have flown snipe with these birds, as also with 
 the peregrine, and have had many "puts in " with both, but 
 have never killed. Nor have I killed a full-grown partridge 
 with a merlin, but it has been done. I really never stuck to it 
 thoroughly. 
 
 Bagged larks to merlins, bagged rooks to peregrines, should never 
 be ostentatiously thrown up as bagged ; for if they are, you must 
 not expect your hawks to look at wild quarry. Shorten the flight 
 perhaps of your bagged bird, but try to let it appear wild. Bagged 
 quarry is good under certain circumstances, but much delicacy and 
 judgment is required in giving it. When a merlin has "put in" 
 lark after lark, a bagged lark in a string (when the wild one cannot 
 be retrieved) is excellent. And, to make "putting-in" probable, 
 instead of flying two merlins at an October lark, fly one, so as to 
 drive the lark down ; for, not finding a second enemy underneath, he 
 may come down into a hedge ; then give your bagged bird— i.e., of 
 course, unless you soon get the one flown at. 
 
 We now come to goshawks, but these will also be found to have 
 a place in " How I became a Falconer." The great matters are to 
 carry them, and (if possible) get them carried by a truistworthy 
 person, some few hours a day in all, very soon after they are received, 
 to keep the bow-perch in a tolerably public place — of course on 
 grass, and to call the bird often to the fist from a wall or gate, 
 iuijreasing the distance, and using a siring at first. They will come 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 43 
 
 with tattered, but I hope without deficient feathers ; for feathers 
 knocked clean out are scarcely ever properly replaced at the next 
 moult, though they may be afterwards : I have known cases where 
 they have been, and where they have not been ; and this applies to 
 all hawks. It is rather a clear corollary, therefore, that broken 
 feathers must not be pulled out ; this does with pigeons, but not 
 with hawks. Weimp broken feathers, as I shall mention presently. 
 
 When the goshawk is tame and in "yarak," give her bagged 
 quarry : she will immediately afterwards fly that which is wild, but 
 not kill with equal ease at first. I think the plumage of the adult 
 bird very beautiful, and infinitely finer than the first. All this is a 
 matter of taste, but to my mind the adult plumage in all hawks is 
 finer than the immature. For this, however — i. e., for what such 
 plumage really is — I send my friends, if they are ignorant, to 
 books of ornithology. Macgillivray and Yarrell are most trust- 
 worthy, and I admire the former exceedingly. Perhaps, however, I 
 may just mention that in the female sparrowhawk and in the female 
 merlin, especially in the merlin, very little difference is perceptible. 
 
 The sjparrowhawh is trained in the same way as the goshawk, 
 and is perhaps even more difficult than that bird to get into flying 
 order. With the female, young partridges, and even old ones, may 
 be taken at the beginning of the season, or at any time when you 
 can get near them. This bird, like the goshawk, has more power 
 from a tree than from the fist ; but I would never encourage fiying 
 from trees. One of these birds once perched, may perch for a long 
 time out of your reach, and careless of lures. The sparrowhawk 
 is far too small to fly at fur, neither is it her habit to do so. The 
 best sport is with blackbirds, and the male or the female may be 
 used ; the latter I prefer. When the quarry takes to covert, it is o 
 be driven out as quickly as possible, the hawk meanwhile coming to 
 the fist, or taking her place on a tree. If it has taken shelter in a 
 hedge, the same tactics must be used as those recommended in 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 magpie-hawking. Sparrowliawks may be broken to the hood, but 
 should seldom wear it. 
 
 Both the goshawk and the sparrowhawk are short-winged haivhs, 
 and do not wait on, but fly from the fist. 
 
 All hawks must have a hath offered them — in the summer every 
 other day, in the winter less frequently. They may be fastened for 
 bathing near a shallow brook, or may have broad and shallow baths 
 placed near their bathing-blocks, and sunk in the ground. They 
 will dry themselves in the sun. Do not let them bathe too near night. 
 
 If the long feathers of the wings or the tail feathers are broken, 
 they must be imped. This is done with needles, which differ of 
 course in length and size, according to the kind of hawk to be imped. 
 The needle for the wing-feather of a peregrine may be more than an 
 inch in length (all the needles are three-sided) ; it tapers to points. 
 Select from feathers you have by you, generally saved from the 
 moult of other hawks, the one which matches in number and size 
 that which you desire to imp. Cut obliquely with a very sharp 
 knife the real and false feathers, so that they will most 
 accurately join, having taken pains to get the true length 
 of the feather, which is a somewhat difficult matter. Dip 
 the needle into brine, so that it may rust when all is 
 completed. Insert half of the needle into the false and half 
 into the true feather ; push hard till you can hardly perceive 
 the mark of division ; indeed, if the thing is well done it is difficult 
 to see it at all. Be careful not to cut the real feather too high, or 
 you will get into the quill, and the needle will not hold ; nor too low, 
 or the feather will break. If the feather is broken very near the"^ 
 quill, and the needle will not hold, cut the quill carefully, and insert, 
 with a little patent glue, a piece of feather stripped of the web, of a 
 size to fit the quill closely, and into that push the needle. I can only 
 add that I hope my readers will seldom have the trouble of imping 
 at all. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 45 
 
 The point of the uppor mandible often becomes too long, and 
 sometimes a split is caused. Cut off the point with a pair of wire 
 nippers, and use a sharp penknife to touch up the work. This 
 is called coping. Of course in all these matters the hawk must be 
 held by asf^istant. 
 
 The brail I have never used, nor do I think it is employed by many 
 falconers. I will copy what is said about it from " Falconry in the 
 British Isles " It is simply a strip of soft leather about half an 
 inch in breadth, tapering towards either end ; a slit of about two 
 inches long is made down the centre of the strip. Through this slit 
 is put the joint of the hawk's wing, whilst the wing is closed ; one 
 end of the leather is brought under the wing, and tied to the other 
 end above it. By this means the wing is retained in its natural 
 position, whilst the bird is at the same time prevented from using 
 it." The brail is used for very restive hawks when they are first 
 taken up. 
 
 And now we come to the moult. Eyesses in the first plumage 
 drop the first feather (the seventh in the wing) sooner than older 
 birds. In the warm counties of England this sometimes happens as 
 soon as the end of March or beginning of April ; but my birds, here 
 in Cheshire, seldom begin their moult till the 1st of May. A bird 
 kypt very fat and warm moults sooner than one hard-worked and 
 more or less exposed. With young eyesses the feathers are not 
 fully replaced until the middle of October, or somewhere about that 
 time. Haggards, and all old hawks' are considerably later. The 
 usual practice is to "put the hawk up to moult," as they call it, i.e., 
 to keep her on the block, or loose in a warm loft, gorging her daily, 
 from March till November. But for some years I have not scrupled 
 to fly grouse with hawks still in the moult ; and all through the 
 summer I have given my moulting hawks some exercise every week 
 or ten days, with lure or pigeon. For myself, I can't endure the notion 
 of the birds doing nothing, sitting on their blocks like parrots in cages 
 
46 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 for more than half the year ! They must take harm, I am sure, by 
 doing so, both in health and in flight. With regard to health, 
 though the confined birds appear pretty well, it takes some weeks 
 or not far short of such a time, to get them into flying condition 
 after the end of moult. The old falconers thought so, at least ; they 
 were most exacting in their demands on this point ; and modern 
 practice, though it in some measure disobeys the old falconers, is 
 compelled not altogether to ignore them. Look at Latham, in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, or sooner : " For there is no man 
 that can make a hawk that is drawn from the mew ready to be 
 flown under five or six weeks, if she be a full hawk." Too soon 
 put on the wing at quarry, after months of excessive fatness, 
 she would be "full of grease and glut," as they used to say — 
 would "melt grease," &c. The best possible way, no doubt, 
 would be to moult our hawks at hack, perhaps with heavy 
 bells; but the risk would be very considerable. However, 
 in my opinion, weekly exercise through moult is good for the 
 bird's health, and makes them continue to be adroit. Of the latter 
 I think a great deal. I am assured, on very valuable authority, 
 that hawks do not even require hack, for a bird, though flying 
 wretchedly when first put on the wing, will, at the end of a week 
 of constant flying, go like a wild one. Perha'ps so, as far as flying 
 straight on end is concerned ; but I cannot bring myself to think 
 that it will turn and foot like a wild one. I do not think that an 
 unbacked bird can ever be so adroit as a hacked bird, even if I 
 grant equal powers of straight flying ; nor can I conceive that six or 
 seven months of absolute idleness during moult does not set its mark 
 for evil both on health and ability. And, with regard to not flying 
 an old grouse-hawk in August or September because it is in the moult, 
 all I can say is that I can't afford to lose the services of my old birds. 
 Were I to shut them up till their moult was perfect, and they them- 
 selves in what is called " flying order," the 10th of December would 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 47 
 
 be upon me almost before I knew where to turn ; nay, in many cases 
 it would be gone by altogether. In short, for the first part and the 
 best part of the grouse season, you must either fly moulting hawks, 
 or kill with nothing but eyesses of the year. And I would rather 
 risk (what I should conceive to be) the very rare accident of the loss 
 of a young and soft feather than leave my favourites on the blocks 
 while I went up the hill with young birds. 
 
 Diseases amongst hawks are not of common occurrence, if the 
 birds are properly managed. 
 
 Cramp is commonly caused by the birds having been taken from 
 the nest too soon, and is often fatal. An old goshawk of mine once 
 had it, through having been left out in the snow and tempest. She was 
 almost cured by goose grease rubbed in. For the young birds try 
 warmth ; but it is rarely of use. 
 
 Fits sometimes attack hawks, but 1 never saw one except in one 
 of the smaller species. Purge with rhubarb ; four grains for a large 
 peregrine, and so in proportion. Give light food well chopped. 
 
 The heclcs is a sort of cough, which peregrines have sometimes. 
 Give a little cayenne pepper in the food, or some six or seven bruised 
 peppercorns in the castings. 
 
 The frounce comes from wet and damp to hawks not at liberty. 
 The tongue is swollen, and a moisture is seen about the beak. It 
 is infectious. Scrape off the diseased coating of the tongue with a 
 sharp quill, and touch the bleeding part well with burnt alum and 
 lemon-juice, or burnt alum and vinegar. 
 
 Inflammation of the crop.—Yerj serious. The bird holds its head 
 straight up, elongating the neck, and is sick. Do not hood ; give no 
 castings. For remedies, rhubarb and chopped meat— very little at a 
 time. A hawk may be sick from indigestion, and yet have no 
 inflammation. 
 
 Worms— HvLh river sand on the meat several times, then a dose of 
 rhubarb. 
 
48 
 
 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 Fractures,— A broken leg or wing may be set. I should ask the 
 family surgeon to help me. 
 
 Parasites. — The flying tick, found sometimes on peregrines, and 
 especially on merlins, will soon leave them. Xiice come from such 
 quarry as rooks. They generally leave after a few baths ; but you 
 may have to blow sulphur under the feathers. The red mite is the 
 worst of all, it burrows in the nares ; but the hawks of a man who 
 keeps them clean can hardly be troubled with it, unless by contagion. 
 A decoction of tobacco and spirit should be applied with a camel's 
 hair pencil. 
 
 Only two or three lines more, to supply omissions. If a haggard 
 peregrine, or any passage peregrine, is sent you, the course is as 
 follows (I copy it from a letter of Robert Barr's) : " When she has 
 fed freely through the rufter hood" (a hood through which she 
 can easily eat, and a little differing from the ordinary one), " fit 
 her with a hood proper, and keep her on the hand day and night " 
 (people, of course, do this in turns), " unhooding her very seldom, 
 and late at night, for two or three weeks. If the bird shows symp- 
 toms of being tame, she may be put on a perch, but hooded v ery 
 early each morning. She should be let pull through the hood as 
 much and as long as possible. When she will feed unhooded, and is % 
 tame enough to take out of doors, tie her to a peg, and let her 
 jump to your fist ; if she does this, get a small fowl (or if you don't 
 want her to fly at herons, a pigeon), and let her go to it when 
 fastened near her ; take her off on a pulling (a fowl's leg, &c.), carry 
 her quietly into the house, and hood her in the dark. Repeat this 
 until you can let her loose ; then give her all the flying and stooping 
 at the lure you can, after this enter her to quarry," &c. 
 
 Lost hawks, if they are not found on the live hack near the house 
 next morning, must be sought far and near with lure and shout.* 
 
 -*= Where they were lost in the first instance, as I have said hefore. 
 
PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
 
 49 
 
 If they have been out some time they may require the bow-net j but 
 hawks differ in this respect, some letting you take them up easily 
 after a fortnight's absence, some getting" comparatively wild by that 
 time — at least wild for the moment ; after a day or two on the block 
 they will be found as tame as ever. 
 
 In speaking of the use of Uve pigeons, I desire to avoid recom- 
 mending the practice of cruelty. I always use the dead lure when 
 I can ; and the life of a pigeon in a falcon's foot is generally so short, 
 that the death can hardly be more painful than that which comes, 
 in the ordinary course, from age or accident. As for chickens, 
 they must be given very sparingly, and, if possible, not given at 
 all, for there is such a thing as involuntarily entering a falcon to 
 the fowls of a farmyard. I hate a hen-killing bird. 
 
 My task is now quite finished. I hope I have done my duty to 
 my readers ; for, if ever there was a man utterly sick of writing the 
 rudiments, tired to death of teaching the o, ^, ro of falconry, I am 
 that man. And yet I so dearly love the sport, that if I find I have 
 helped anyone to understand it, and to practise it with pleasure, I 
 shall forget the torture in remembering the cause. 
 
 E 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER * 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH KESTRELS, SPARROWHAWKS, MERLINS — 
 EARLY NOTES ON FLYING THE MERLIN — MY OLD ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 I don't know whether I have at all succeeded, but I have certainly 
 endeavoured to repeat myself as little as possible in anything I 
 have written on the subject of falconry, both here and elsewhere, 
 I am conscious, however, that it is diJEcult to avoid even the old 
 expressions — and some of the old matter is of course unavoidable — 
 in writing upon a subject which the author has worn almost thread- 
 bare. Nevertheless, I only hope that what I am about to do will 
 not be considered an impertinence — not the thrusting of an unsa- 
 voury morsel down reluctant throats — not the appearing again on 
 the stage before an audience long ago quite tired of me, and disposed 
 to hiss me off. 
 
 I had the thing born in me, I believe, for I cannot remember that 
 I read any books on hawking when I was at school ; and yet it was 
 then that I was determined, if possible, to train a hawk to fly birds. 
 I had, however, read the " Swiss Family Eobinson," and thought 
 Fritz a very clever fellow to train the Malabar eagle as he did, 
 though I now know that he did so in a perfectly impossible way. 
 I have not the most feeble notion what is meant by a Malabar eagle ; 
 
 * The chapters entitled " Ho;v I became a Falconer" were published in 
 The Field before the little treatise on " Practical Falconry." This has 
 been mentioned before, but it may be as well to notice it again in this place . 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
54 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 but the flight with flamingoes must have been a glorious one indeed. 
 I remember the account of it lighted the tinder hidden somewhere 
 in my heart, and it has certainly blazed away since with more than 
 a sufiicient flame. 
 
 My first essay was with a kestrel, which I believed (in common 
 with a good many others, I fancy) to be a sparrowhawk. I hooded 
 him, poor fellow, with a black velvet hood, manufactured, to my 
 order, by my mother's maid. This hood was little more than a bag 
 tightened by a piece of tape, and it made the bird's eyes water, for 
 it hung upon them. I did not know at that time that hoods must 
 be stiff, and made upon a block. The kestrel disappointed me very 
 much, for he was frightened out of his wits at a live starling, and 
 would not always kill a sparrow. He got tame, it is true; but, 
 though I sat up with him surreptitiously, night after night, till I 
 was dreadfully fagged, in order to keep him awake — as I had heard 
 from my friends, and from some book I at this time got sight of, I 
 ought to do — he flew away in the most natural manner the first time 
 I gave him his liberty. I tried several kestrels, but one was as bad 
 as the other, and it was not till some time later that I knew how 
 even the most skilful care, had it been mine to give, would have been 
 thrown away upon birds which, though easily tamed, do not chase. 
 
 Then I got a sparrowhawk, which went through the usual process 
 of getting his legs entangled in the imbecility of a temporary 
 paralysis, falling off the fist the moment he was placed upon it, and 
 hanging by his leash like a dead bird. Still I stuck to him well, 
 and hardly ever lost my temper. I made allowances for his ill- 
 humour, and tried to look to the future when I should reap my 
 reward ; but that future never came. Some accident happened to 
 the bird, and he was never put on the wing at all. 
 
 Some years passed, and I got a whole nest of sparrowhawks. I 
 put them in an apple tree, in an open hamper with straw, the lid 
 forming a platform. I fed them periodically on beefsteak, sounding 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 55 
 
 a loud whistle during the process ; I let them fly at hack, and took 
 them up with a net ; I carried two of them a good deal, putting 
 such jesses as I could make upon their legs, and using a leash with 
 a spring swivel. All this was a wonderful improvement. It is not, 
 I think, necessary to hack sparrowhawks ; but I certainly committed 
 no fault in doing so — I was right rather than wrong. Had I only 
 known how necessary it is to keep these hawks (unhooded) in the 
 constant presence of children, strangers, dogs, and so forth, T think 
 it very likely that I should have had something like a perfect success ; 
 as it was, I rejoiced my heart by killing young house pigeons, thrown 
 up from the hand, with some of the female birds when they were in 
 in a respectable humour, both hawk and quarry being at perfect 
 liberty. 
 
 About this time I made one of the most agreeable friendships of 
 which it has ever been my good fortune to boast, which has existed 
 for more than sixteen years, and is now based upon matters of more 
 importance than falconry. My friend lived then in Northumberland, 
 and I made the journey from Northamptonshire to see him. He 
 showed me both the peregrine and merlin on the wing, and on the 
 block ; and it may be easily imagined that I got all the information 
 on hawking subjects I could extract. My visit lasted a fortnight, 
 so I had plenty of opportunity. My friend also presented me with 
 a female merlin, " Pearl " by name — one of the best hawks I ever 
 possessed. I went home to fly Pearl at pigeons and larks, to procure 
 nestling merlins when the season came and also more sparrowhawks. 
 Now I began to feel something like confidence in myself, and I was 
 in fact becoming a falconer. Still I had an immense deal to learn ; 
 I had only seen the smaller hawks, and those chiefly when I was 
 entirely without instruction. But I procured five or six merlins, 
 gave them a long hack, and trained them with very considerable 
 success — the females to pigeons, the males to larks. Year after year 
 I flew merlins in Northamptonshire and (afterwards) in Cheshire : 
 
56 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 and, when at last I brought the sport of lark-flying to a point as 
 near perfection as I think it can attain, or as any other falconer haa 
 brought it, I used female as well as male birds for that flight, being 
 certain that they have the less tendency to despair under disappoint- 
 ment. Merlins, of all hawks, are the most liable to give up in the 
 face of discouragement. They are very courageous birds, as far as 
 attacking large quarry is concerned, and it is wonderful that such 
 little creatures can capture and kill a pigeon ; but they certainly 
 ■will not go up into the skies time after time, when they are losing 
 their larks. I have seen the truth of this year after year ; and when 
 the Barra tried merlins at larks not very long ago, and were delighted 
 with them to begin with, I told my friend " Captain Falconer" that 
 their enthusiasm would subside a little towards the middle of 
 September. And so it did. About the 8th of September sky- 
 larks have got over the moult, are in full feather nearly, and are 
 almost ready to go up, before a fast cast of merlins, singing into 
 the clouds. 
 
 I don't know whether it is bad taste in me to refer to " Mount 
 Carmel;"* but it was the Eev. Josiah Worzel of that book who, 
 having seen my merlins leave their larks halfway, offered his advice 
 upon the subject, and not very stupid advice either. For Mr. 
 Worzel, more a farmer than a priest, was not altogether a fool ; 
 and he really took some little interest in falconry. He never met 
 me at one fcime without saying in his own charming and modest 
 manner, which, as will be seen, rather omitted than assumed any - 
 thing — " Well, ' Peregrine, 'ow's the 'awk ? " He told me bethought 
 I ought not to unhood in bright sunlight. This has nothing in the 
 world to do with merlins leaving their quarry ; but a long experience 
 has taught me that he was in a measure right, for it is much better 
 
 ♦ Mount Carmel : a Tale of Modern English Life. Eichard Bentley, New 
 Burlington-street, 1867. 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 57 
 
 to carry merlins unhooded when they are really in the field. My 
 plan has been this : I have unhooded just before entering the field, 
 and have then carried a hawk on each hand, holding the tips of the 
 jesses. It is wonderful how the little birds stand on the qui vive^ 
 turning their heads sharply at the least movement of a leaf, and 
 ready to start into full swing at the rising of a lark. J ust in this 
 way, though not so lightly, the goshawk sits on the glove, when she 
 is in real earnest, and prepares to dash off as you kick each bush 
 for a rabbit. But of the goshawk I shall speak in another chapter. 
 
 At first I used to keep my merlins too long at hack. I thought, 
 and rightly thought, that it was better to have three or four clever, 
 active birds, with strong muscles, than five or six that had only been 
 on the wing for a week ; but I forgot how unfair it is to suppose 
 that keepers can protect little hawks, even from their own guns. 
 The bells may not be heard, and the size of a merlin on the wing 
 is so nearly that of the kestrel and sparrowhawk, that, unless a 
 keeper is very careful indeed, he may destroy your property without 
 at all meaning to do so. Peregrines are such large birds, so different 
 from what keepers call "the country hawks," that they can hardly 
 ever be killed by a man who has instructions to preserve them, unless 
 he is a rogue ; but merlins, as I have said, have not the protection 
 of size. These little hawks, then, while it is necessary that they 
 should run some risk of their lives, need not be rashly exposed. 
 The longer they are out, the more they are in danger ; and, indeed, 
 if they are out too long — unless the bells are so weighty as to injure 
 them — they will prey for themselves, and so leave you. Give them 
 a good three weeks, and be thankful if you take them up at the end 
 of that time uninjured. 
 
 I wish heartily that I had kept a journal, of late years, on hawking 
 matters ; but it is a long time since I set down any incident belonging 
 to the sport. Still, I have page after page of first experiences, to 
 which my friends are very welcome. They are the enthusiastic 
 
58 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 records ot a young falconer's practice, and may amuse young 
 falconers now. 
 
 These for instance :— '* 1852. Feb. 19. Pearl's (a female merlin) 
 first flight in Northamptonshire. Very cold N.W. wind. Turned 
 her pigeon several times, but it was ultimately blown away from her. 
 She came back well to the lure." *' Feb. 23. Pearl made a beautiful 
 flight after a powerful pigeon, from the stone bridge in Boughton 
 Park. She flew in earnest for half a mile, and quite out of sight. 
 The pigeon beat her, going down wind. She made a brilliant stoop 
 to the lure of several hundred yards, over some high trees." 
 " Feb. 26. Pearl killed her pigeon after a flight of a few hundred 
 yards. Drove it into a ditch, and strangled it." Then came a few 
 unsuccessful flights. And then — "March 6. Pearl drove her pigeon 
 into the water, after striking it down. The pigeon was picked up 
 under the bank, from whence it dared not move." Unsuccessful 
 flights again. Then — " March 18. An excellent flight. Pearl followed 
 very close, and the birds went quite out of sight, taking over 
 Dainty's Fields for Weekly Hall Wood. I could not keep them in 
 view by running. Pearl evidently killed; she was repeatedly 
 striking the pigeon when 1 last saw her. After an hour's waiting 
 she came back to me to Dainty's Field, from whence she started. 
 Her jesses and talons were covered with wet blood. I hunted for 
 the pigeon afterwards, but could not find it ; probably killed in the 
 wood." " I flew Pearl almost every day since the last account 
 was written, at pigeons or to the lure, but latterly at larks. She 
 chased these birds into the sky till she was often all but lost to 
 view, always coming back beautifully to hand, though I kept her 
 high fed, as the moulting time had almost commenced." " On this 
 day— April 23—1 lost her!" 
 
 There ; perhaps that will do ! The last entry is disagreeable to 
 me even now. 
 
 One year my young merlins roosted on the trees of a small clump 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 59 
 
 which had one rook's nest, or, as it was some little distance from the 
 rookery, it might have been a carrion crow's nest, for my ornithology 
 was not very general at that time. I spared the birds when they 
 built, laid, and hatched, and they rewarded me by persecuting my 
 merlins, then only just able to fly, and by pecking out the eye of a 
 fine female bird. 
 
 At that time I was merlin-mad, and would have given up a day's 
 pheasant shooting for one ringing flight at a lark. I did something 
 with sparrowhawks, but not very much, for the others took my 
 time. 
 
 Presently " Falconry in the British Isles " was published, my 
 Northumberland friend being one of the authors ; the admirable 
 lithographs being of his own execution, and taken from his own 
 drawings. This book increased my zeal for falconry, and I very 
 soon made a first essay with the peregrine. I began with a tiercel 
 sent to me from Scotland, and, though he was nqt a good one, thanks 
 no doubt in a measure to myself, I began to prefer this hawk to 
 either of the other species I have named. In short, I was more 
 enthusiastic than ever. It appeared to me a great injustice that 
 birds, made, as I thought, for the use of man — as the horse and 
 dog are made — should be tortured in traps, killed at the eyrie, 
 outlawed, treated as vermin ; in short, hunted to death through- 
 out the kingdom. I knew that they were bold, dashing, tractable, 
 capable of some attachment, excellent in their beauty, surpassing 
 all creatures in their swiftness ; that they were, after all, the very 
 princes of the air, the aristocracy of the things that fly. Moreover, 
 I had called them out of the clouds to my feet ; I had reared them, 
 fed them, made them my servants and my friends. In them I had 
 " dominion over the fowls of the air." And I remembered what they 
 once were ; how, in times as hearty as these, and more noble, they 
 stood first of all amongst the instruments of the chase. 
 
 I thought I would defend them. I almost smile now at my notion 
 
60 
 
 HOW 1 BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 that there was a chivalry in this, for which I ahonld be thanked. 
 But I felt that they were discarded only becaase they were out of 
 sight, and I wished to bring them back again, to place them 
 thoroughly before the gaze of others. I was sanguine enough to 
 think that, with my own pen, I could give them once more a place 
 in the world. 
 
 I failed. I did not sufficiently take into consideration the physical 
 change which has, in the last hundred years, passed over the face of 
 the country. Neither, perhaps, did I enough remember this singular 
 truth : that sport in Britain, especially in England, is not now as of 
 old, permitted to depend chiefly upon toil, courage, endurance, 
 uncertainty, and skifl, but is the child of ease and luxury, and the 
 love of slaughter — artificial in its appliances, and looking to the 
 result with a grasping eagerness which ought to belong only to the 
 means. 
 
HOW T BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 61 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SPORT— HAWKS FRIQHTENINa GAME FROM THE LAND- 
 PERMISSION TO FLY AT GROUSE — BLACK CLOUD. 
 
 I CAN quite understand those persons who say that falconry ia a 
 mere pastime up to a certain point ; though I don't quite believe 
 them. To me it was sport to see a cast of merlins fly right up into 
 the sky after a lark ; even to see a pigeon taken by a merlin when 
 the flight was good. But I confess that I have modified many of my 
 opinions in the matter of falconry. For instance, I have in a mea- 
 sure changed my notions with respect to the love of the peregrine 
 for grouse. That a hawk, T believe now, bred on a grouse moor, takes 
 to this quarry naturally, and with delight ; and what I retain is — 
 and what I shall ever retain is only — that she, on the whole, ia a 
 grand institution of nature; and this, looking at the matter 
 entirely from a shooter's point of view, because she strikes out 
 disease, stamps it out, when first it shows its hideous head upon 
 the moors. 
 
 But if I can now understand those persons who look on falconry, 
 up to a certain point, only as a pastime, my notions being on this 
 head somewhat changed — if I can see that the killing of larks and 
 blackbirds is an occupation which possibly can hardly claim for 
 itself the distinguished term of " sport," be it done this way or 
 that — I still hold, and ask every true sportsman to hold with me, 
 this truth, viz., that when game (or a large bird such as a heron) is 
 killed in the chase, by creatures tutored by man to pursue it, there 
 is sport r 
 
 I look back to my merlin days, much as I like to look back on 
 them, a little as upon one's schoolboy days. Merlin-flying is 
 
62 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 sport ; but not, perhaps, an accepted sport. I am quite content to 
 pnt it so. 
 
 But the peregrine ; the goshawk ! A great falconer said to me 
 many years ago : " It ia all very well our saying this and that ; 
 merlins are enchanting, most wonderful in what they do ; but the 
 peregrine is the bird for us." And I don't wish to make any bones 
 about it ; the peregrine has certainly been the bird for me. 
 
 And yet it is just because one part of falconry is little more than 
 a pastime perhaps, while the other part is a thorough sport, that 
 we find , a difficulty. Go beyond the pastime, deal effectively with 
 the larger hawks, and you come to something serious. If a man 
 flies sparrowhawks and merlins, he will want time, it is true — ^he will 
 want patience, skill, and so on ; but he will not want expense nor 
 preserved land ; neither will he create jealousies, running the risk 
 of engendering quarrels. And yet, when you have flown the smaller 
 birds, ten to one you are not content withdut flying the larger— 
 that is, if you have anything like the opportunity. We all know, 
 or knew once, that the stream, so small at its source, acquires 
 strength in its progress, and receives many tributaries on its way. 
 
 If a man has no land of his own fit for hawking game on, and 
 does not intend to rent any, I think he should content himself with 
 the small hawks. I do not in this instance practise what I preach, 
 as I shall show presently ; but I know how common the belief is 
 that the presence of the peregrine drives game from the land. I am 
 positive that it does not ; but if the man from whom you ask per- 
 mission to hawk, or who gives you the privilege unsolicited, thinks 
 it does, you are receiving a favour from him, the extent of which it 
 is almost impossible to calculate. Shoot for him sometimes, and 
 welcome — and it may even answer to him to ask you ; but do any- 
 thing to drive the game from his manor, and you are certainly not 
 fit to be on the land at all. I could not excuse this myself ; I could 
 not tolerate it in the least ; it is not in human nature, nor neces- 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 63 
 
 sarily in gentlemanlike courtesy, to permit it for a moment. And, 
 therefore, I think, as a rule^ that the man who has not game of his 
 own, had better have nothing to do with the peregrine. 
 
 I never flew the artificial hawk when shooting, to make the birds 
 lie. They tell me that it drives, at any rate, partridges from the 
 ground. I don't know. I don't deny it ; I simply don't know. I 
 don't deny it, because I can't refuse to receive what any gentleman, 
 or any honest keeper or labourer, tells me on his word ; I don't know 
 it, as I have seen nothing of the sort, and as those who assert it 
 may possibly be mistaken. But there is something else — I really 
 don't care about it ; and I don't care about it because I have flown 
 the peregrine falcon pretty often at game — industriously for nearly 
 a dozen years — and (by some sort of accident, I suppose, for I am 
 not such an idiot as to claim anything else) I have found the land on 
 which I have hawked rather specially full of game than otherwise, 
 and this both in a particular part of a particular manor, and in 
 many different counties in England. There is nothing in this ; I 
 claim nothing— probably my fancy has run away with me ; but to 
 the following belief I am ready solemnly to set my hand. It is this : 
 That if at one time a couple of men were to pass over a moor 
 shooting, and at another time a couple of men were to pass over 
 the same moor hawking, there would not be the smallest difference 
 in the frights which the game had received, as far as its leaving the 
 Icmd is concerned. The birds are there the day after hawking, just 
 as they are the day after shooting ; the only difference is that they 
 lie better after the former than after the latter sport. 
 
 And yet game is driven from the ground by the artificial hawk ! 
 Perhaps so. The onus is hardly with me, one way or another. But 
 if the fact is certain, as it may be, I can only suggest, what indeed I 
 saw suggested some years ago, that the buzzard or the hen harrier 
 — snatching prey from the ground or close to it as they do, rather 
 than chasing — may cause some birds to get up in the distance, and 
 
64 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 BO lead to the notion in the sportsman's mind of an excessive fright ; 
 for the slow, heavy apparatus which I once saw in a friend's gun- 
 room is not unlike either of these hawks. That under no possible 
 circumstances can it look like a peregrine falcon, I am very certain. 
 
 I have not a single yard of ground of my own, nor any under my 
 control on which I can hawk a grouse. I am indebted to an excellent 
 friend of mine, who has the Buxton Moors for many a kind invita- 
 tion ; and to my friend Philip Brocklehurst, Esq., of Swythamley 
 Park, for a special permission to fly my peregrines over certain 
 limited lands here. And Mr. Brocklehurst must forgive me if I tell 
 any of the readers of The Field, who have cared to look through 
 what at any time I may have said about grrowse-hawking, that they 
 owe far more to him than to myself the information which has 
 amused them. I should not have cared to take my- birds very far 
 from home for an hour's flying, but I can get a flight at grouse in 
 less than two hundred yards from my house ; and what I have so 
 constantly had the opportunity of doing myself, and have done, I 
 have been able to describe to others. 
 
 Soon after I set to work in real earnest with the peregrine, I had, 
 flying at hack with three or four more, a dark tiercel, which at first 
 I thought little of. He seemed to me very shy, and not good- 
 tempered. But he was given me by my kind tutor in falconry, of 
 whom I have already spoken, who got him from Lundy Island. He 
 reached me just as he was able to fly a little. One of the other 
 tiercels had escaped before it knew the lure, and this is an awkward 
 accident when the bird is too young to care for a live pigeon in a 
 string ; for, though it may be able to fly only a little, that little is as 
 dangerous as a mile, and more provoking, if the moment you get 
 within two or three yards of the hawk he immediately flies almost 
 thirty. My patience, after much trial, was rather like Mr. Dickens's 
 brandy-and-water when, on board ship, he followed his sick wife up 
 and down the saloon with that restorative for a quarter of an hour, 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 65 
 
 as she rolled helplessly with the movement of the vessel from one 
 end to another : there was hardly a teaspoonful left at last. The 
 bird would not look at the lure, graced though it was with beef- 
 steak, even at the distance of a few yards. I did, therefore, what ia 
 the only thing to do in such a case. I fastened another peregrine 
 to the ground within easy sight of the truant, gave him a lure 
 (fastened also), and, close to, pegged down some beef under a bow- 
 net. The stray bird nodded his head, opened his wings, shut them, 
 opened them again, and flew down to the peregrine which was 
 eating from the lure. From that lure he was driven, as I knew he 
 would be, by the feeding bird ; he shifted easily to the meat under 
 the net, and I had him in an instant. The peregrine which I tied 
 down to do the dirty work of a decoy bird was the black tiercel I 
 disliked ; the black tiercel was afterwards " Black Cloud," and Black 
 Cloud was one of the best peregrines I ever had in my life. He was 
 killed in Somersetshire, partridge hawking, by a man who threw a 
 stick at him, not knowing, I believe, that he was a trained bird ; 
 but I had the feeling of injustice so strong upon me at the time 
 that I am afraid I told the keeper, should the opportunity ever 
 present itself , to take particular pains with that man's ribs. 
 
 I remember well the first time I began to suspect that Black Cloud 
 was a treasure. It was a windy day, and he was flying at hack with 
 the rest ; they were playing together. And a beautiful sight it is to 
 see the hawks play. Even on the ground they are amusing, catching 
 pieces of stick and dropping them — in short, behaving not unlike 
 kittens. But, on the wing, they dash about, and make stoops at 
 each other, which are most adroitly avoided. All this, of course, is 
 Nature's teaching for something more serious presently. Black 
 Cloud shot up the highest of all, and came down the fastest ; he 
 moved about like a swallow. I came in perfectly delighted, and said 
 that he would be the bird ; and so he was. His pitch was excellent, 
 his speed wonderful ; but he was then a wild bird. 1 only gave 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 him a fortnight's hack. Once taken up, he soon came to himself, 
 and was remarkably docile. He was very good at pigeons and par- 
 tridges, waiting on for any length of time, and very high. He killed 
 one grouse — an old one — and, had I accustomed him to that flight, 
 might have taken to grouse ; but a tiercel is not often to be depended 
 on for this quarry. I once saw him take a skylark. He had been 
 waiting on a long time for partridges, and became tired, perhaps 
 out of temper ; a lark rose, and he had it in a moment coming 
 down from his pitch like lightning ; but I never touched the quarry, 
 for he went quietly to a tree, and ate it there. I was flying in a 
 country where hawking was unknown, and I shall never forget the 
 open-mouthed stare of some passing labourers to whom, on the same 
 day, I pointed out this hawk in the air, and asked them if they 
 would like to see that large bird on my hand. They grinned, 
 thinking probably that I was an amiable maniac ; but when I tossed 
 up the lure, on which he dropped at my feet, took him up, fed, and 
 hooded him, I almost think, *' after they had looked a great while," 
 they changed their minds and suspected me of sorcery. 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 67 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 STORM CLOUD — THE PRINCESS — ISLAY — NEARLY BLINDED — 
 AN APPEAL TO THE GENEROSITY OF SPORTSMEN. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the real difficulty with which the inex- 
 perienced falconer has to contend is, not the taming a hawk, but 
 the managing the training in such a way that the bird shall fly 
 quarry eagerly and in the most effective manner. A hawk " made *' 
 at once to the lure, from a nestling, and never shown quarry for 
 some months, would probably never even look at a pigeon on 
 the wing. Such a bird was once sent to me, and it flew, even 
 when hungry, through a flock of pigeons, not taking the smallest 
 notice of them. This was a peregrine tiercel. On the other 
 hand, you may so fly a hawk at quarry, especially I think at 
 game, killing day after day, and feeding the hawk up from 
 the head and neck of the grouse or partridge — something sub- 
 stantial being of course added — that the dead lure will cease 
 to have any attractions. Indeed, I confess that I have been 
 obliged to take down some of my most successful falcons, 
 when I did not happen to find them on the game, with a live 
 pigeon in a string. At the same time, I have had birds — such 
 as the Princess and Storm Cloud (not Black Cloud, but a falcon) — 
 which would come to a dead lure in the middle of their best work ; 
 and yet these were brilliant birds. They curiously combined success 
 with docility ; and I remind my readers that they were brilliant, 
 because had they not been so, their coming to the dead lure would 
 have been nothing. Never, I would say to a young falconer, buy a 
 hawk only because it comes well to the lure ; see it fly quarry, and 
 fast quarry also ; but this advice I gave by implication just now, 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 when I mentioned the tiercel that flew through a flock of pigeonB 
 without noticing them. 
 
 Storm Cloud was shot by a ruffian, some miles from here — I 
 confess she was in the act of carrying off one of his pigeons — on the 
 day the Prince of Wales was married, or the day before. I traced 
 her to a bird-stuffer, and had the hardest work to get her from him, 
 for he had been threatened with an action at law by the shooter if 
 he allowed anyone to take her oat of the shop. I took the inspector 
 of police with me, in order to give the thing a formidable appearance, 
 and claimed my property, which I assured the bird-stuffer I could 
 swear to, and which certainly had not ceased to be my property 
 because a rascal had robbed me of its chief value — viz., the life. 
 " He will spend 51. on it," said the bird-stuffer to me, "before he 
 will let it go. " And I will spend five-and-twenty before I lose even 
 her skin," I replied to the bird-stuffer. It ended in my having the 
 skin. Storm Cloud is stuffed by the famous Mr. John Hancock, the 
 stuffer of the falcons in the Great Exhibition of 1851 ; and I see her 
 now as I take my eyes for a moment off the paper on which I am 
 writing. 
 
 She was the only excellent peregrine I ever saw come f airLy to 
 hand from a great distance, and yet she ate just as much as she 
 liked. A brute that would look at nothing but the lure might easily 
 be made to do so ; but Storm Cloud would come out of the sky to 
 my hand, not flying over and striking, but settling most gently, and 
 this with half a crop before she came. She was a most excellent 
 rook hawk, no discouragement, such as the quarry escaping in trees, 
 daunting her ; and she was equally good at grouse and pigeons. It 
 is difficult for a person who is not a falconer to understand the 
 shock which the news of such a bird's death gives one. She was 
 only lost two days. We were on her track and close to her, and 
 should have undoubtedly had her in a few hours, had the informa- 
 tion that I had offered two guineas to anyone who would only show 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 69 
 
 her to me at liberty and uninjured reached the pigeon fancier. 
 Time changes one's notions, and heals all manner of wounds, as I 
 need not say ; but then I would have gone to the stable, taken out 
 my horse, and shot him through the head with my own hand, if by 
 doing so I could have saved the life of Storm Cloud. 
 
 The fact of a peregrine coming to hand at all is quite exceptional. 
 Merlins and sparrowhawks do it, and so do goshawks. The Princess, 
 when she has been lost on a grouse, I have taken in the afternoon 
 from a stone wall — her crop standing out like a pouter pigeon's — 
 by simply placing my hand under her feet, perhaps with a pigeon's 
 leg or some such trifle on it ; but she never came straight to hand 
 from the distance, only to the lure. To see this little falcon on the 
 wing (she was small, as Storm Cloud was large) was a thing to be 
 freshly remembered through life. From a high pitch she shot for- 
 ward at the rising of a grouse, at a rate which startled those who 
 saw it, and was even greater than Islay's ; though the extraordinary 
 success of the latter falcon, her almost unequalled speed, and her most 
 adroit footing, I suppose, make her at least equal to any other hawk 
 which I have trained. I shall speak of her presently. 
 
 I never killed a hare with the peregrine, though I have seen 
 enough to know that it may be done with a cast of these birds. 
 What the Princess liked best was a grouse ; next to that a pigeon ; 
 at rooks she was nothing remarkable ; but one day she took to 
 flying hares in the most astounding manner. I saw her strike a 
 hare, I think, twenty times in a succession of stoops, only stopping 
 when the hare squatted, which she did frequently. At last she 
 came down and grappled, and when I arrived, scarcely able to 
 breathe with the exertion of running, hoping that for once in my 
 life I might take a hare with a peregrine — when I was, in fact, 
 within seven or eight yards of hawk and quarry — the hare jumped 
 up very high, pitched off the Princess, who was trying to hold on 
 like grim death, and disappeared down a hillside, the hawk stooping 
 
70 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 again till they were out of sight. The fur which I pulled off the 
 falcon's feet was all of the hare I ever really touched. 
 
 I lost the Princess only once before I lost her altogether. She 
 had flown through two grouse seasons, and I thought she would 
 never leave me for many hours at a time, as she never had left me. 
 If she was out for the night, there was a pigeon in the field, to 
 which, like other hawks I have had of late, she always came. But 
 one day she took it into lier head to disappear and stayed away 
 exactly a fortnight. I had kept relays of pigeons out for ten days, 
 and then I gave her up, for she was not in the neighbourhood. At 
 last there was a cry of a falcon over the house ; I went out with a 
 pigeon, and she came (fat as ever though she was) in an instant to 
 my feet. I fancy a snow-storm had sent her home. 
 
 When at length I really lost her, I have no doubt she was shot. 
 An excellent and noble friend of mine saw her last flight, and sent 
 me two peregrines from Scotland as soon afterwards as he could. I 
 have her photograph — a very good one ; but that is all left me now 
 of the Princess — except, indeed, the memory of those bright days 
 we have spent together on the hills, and the great wish that I could 
 see her once more, even if it were only as she dashed across this 
 valley, with a thing like a dark ball twenty yards before her, making 
 my heart leap as she went. 
 
 I pause for a moment in this little history, to say how thoroughly 
 the being wedded to one special sport takes away the enthusiasm for 
 others. For myself, I am not now quite in that predicament, for I 
 have cooled down a good deal of late, and I think I am almost fonder 
 of the memory of my birds than I am of the sport of falconry itself. 
 I like a day's pheasant shooting very much indeed : with all my 
 honest regret that sport has lately taken a phase of which I dis- 
 approve, I like a gun and a covert full of pheasants. Who does 
 not ? 
 
 I make a point of mentioning this sort of feeling, because 1, who 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 71 
 
 ask so much sympathy for my own notions, should be inconsistent 
 if I ignored it. To me the great charm of sport rests in anticipation, 
 in uncertainty, in some labour, in the necessity of expedients, in the 
 employment of animals trained to the chase ; and I protest against 
 the loading and firing as fast as you can taking a high place in 
 sport ; but I won't deny that I like the opportunity of doing so once 
 or twice in the year. While hawking was with me a positive 
 passion, I should not have admitted this: indeed, I did not feel 
 it. But, strong as my opinions remain as to what ought to be, 
 I am occasionally dazzled with what is. 
 
 I rather wanted an opportunity of being understood in this matter, 
 for I should shrink from being set down as a coxcomb who thinks 
 that all the world is wrong, and that he and his few friends are 
 alone right. I shall go on with my subject much more agreeably to 
 myself, now that I can seem to offer my experience of a sport which 
 is certainly not at all remunerative as far as the bag is concerned, 
 simply for what that sport is worth. 
 
 If a concentrated excitement is one of the elements of sport, a 
 flight after important quarry has one of those elements in perfection. 
 And there is an old stager now sitting under the shed not far from 
 the room in which I am writing, who has given me and others 
 excitement enough in all conscience.^" This is Islay, a three- 
 year-old falcon, and therefore waiting for her fourth grouse 
 season : her fourth, that is, in point of time : in point of fly- 
 ing she has only passed through two — last year having been what 
 all know it was. Not a gun was flred nor a hawk flown on these 
 moors, t 
 
 In the year 1865, 1 rather thought matters were coming to an end 
 with me ; I had an attack of pleurisy, or some pleuritic affection, in 
 the summer. One hawk, and one only, a falcon, was flying at hack ; 
 
 * This hawk is lost. 
 
 t The yciir of the grouse -disease, 1^67. 
 
72 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 I had not left my room, and scarcely my bed, when she had been ont 
 nearly six weeks ; and this is a long time, especially with a hawk 
 lightly belled as she was. Her entire absence for two days was 
 reported, and I was determined she should be taken on the first 
 opportunity. At four o'clock one morning, in most beautiful 
 weather, I looked out of the window, and saw this falcon quietly 
 feeding in the bow-net which had been set on the lawn. I put on- 
 some things, went down, and caught her at once, and I am very glad 
 I did, for I took no harm by the imprudence, and the hawk was 
 Islay. 
 
 Many hawks, which turn out well in the end, fly low for the first 
 few weeks. The Princess rose at once, as did many other hawks of 
 mine ; but, if I remember rightly, Islay did not get to her pitch just 
 at first. She is a full-sized bird, and little hawks, as a rule, get 
 up high to begin with. I soon saw, however, what she was made of. 
 A windy day, when the wind is soft and warm, generally brings out 
 a peregrine intended for game ; if she don't go up then, one begins 
 to fear. Islay is a bird whose heart is set on grouse ; she throws 
 away no chance, and strains every nerve when the time comes. 
 Her ordinary pitch is only about eighty yards, though she will 
 occasionally rise a quarter of a mile ; but she keeps well over the 
 heads of the beaters, and is ready, with two or three rapid strokes, 
 to put herself into full swing the moment a feather of the right 
 sort leaves the ground. Grouse need fly fast to escape such a hawk 
 as this ; that they do fly very fast I need not tell many of my 
 readers ; but when they get away from such birds as Islay or the 
 Princess, they do not save their lives by speed. They get away very 
 often, but they do so by dashing into cover ; there, in a hilly country, 
 they are often safe, as it is a difficult thing to mark the exact spot 
 of their concealment. 
 
 Islay has her faults ; the other hawks which I have mentioned 
 had positively none. She is the only bird ever in my possession. 
 
HOW I BECAME A TALCONER. 
 
 7S 
 
 that attempted to injure me. It was done grouse-hawking. I had 
 just lifted her on the quarry, and was turning the grouse so that 
 the hawk might not eat the breast, but confine herself to the head 
 and neck, when unfortunately it slipped out of my hand. Imme- 
 diately she flew at my face, and there clung like a little fiend with 
 both feet, giving me both torture and fright. Fright, because I was 
 afraid lest she should change her hold, providentially not in either 
 of my eyes as yet, and so blind me for life. She drew blood with 
 all her claws, and made the places swell. I caught hold of her legs, 
 one with each hand, but she would not loose. One of my boys, how- 
 ever was near, and he put the grouse close to her, to which she 
 moved from my face. I ought to have seized her by the neck at 
 once ; she would then have changed her hold to my hand, in order 
 to save herself from strangulation. I think it very unlikely that 
 she will attempt anything of this kind again, and of course I am 
 careful that she has no provocation. The best way with her is not to 
 lift the grouse at all, but to take her off it on a pigeon's wing, or 
 something of that kind, secure, a jesse, and then you are safe. She 
 has also the bad fault of occasionally stepping back off her game as 
 you approach her with your hand, though this is only the case when 
 she is careless from not being sufficiently sharp-set. As a hawk to 
 Mil grouse with, however — and I suppose that is the point — I will back 
 her against any trained bird in the world. She has also a wonderful 
 knowledge of localities, and is never lost. 
 
 I nave now picked out of hawks, spread over the space of some 
 years, two or three which seemed to me specially good and remark- 
 able ; and, though no doubt I could fill pages with the histories of 
 my other peregrines, I forbear — believing that the reader has had 
 quite sufficient already. 
 
 In another chapter I hope to give a few anecdotes, and, in a fifth, 
 and last, to say something about my doings with the goshawks. I 
 will not, however, lay down any particular rule for the order in 
 
74 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 which I may write my experiences. These are professedly desultory 
 chapters, and one had better perhaps wait for the convenience 
 of the moment,. Things strike one by the way. 
 
 The time is drawing near* when young birds will be flying at hack, 
 and falconers are already making sure of materials to work upon in 
 the shape of nestling peregrines. Let me advise beginners — and it 
 is for such chiefly that I vrrite — to take every pains that the young 
 birds are well and regularly fed from the time they are taken from 
 the eyrie till the moment they are placed in the hamper and entrusted 
 to the railway. This can, of course, only be done by writing to the 
 keepers, or the dealers, into whose hands they at first fall ; when 
 they reach the falconer he will know what to do with them. Also, 
 I would not have them taken too soon ; when this is done they are 
 subject to cramp, and, if they escape it, they are generally screamers. 
 For my own part, I can't endure a screamer, the jar on one's nerves 
 is too much for me; besides, screaming birds, though always 
 courageous, are seldom very high flyers. 
 
 Let me also, in this place, ask any gentleman who owns the land 
 on which peregrines breed, or who has control there, to spare the old 
 birds. I know I am open to the retort, that the request is almost 
 an impertinent one, for that I am asking a man to make what he 
 will consider sacrifices in a cause with which he has no concern. If 
 that is said, I am silent because I think myself that every man is 
 concerned in affairs of humanity and generosity ; but if it is answered 
 that, in consideration of a time-honoured sport, for the sake of those 
 glorious birds themselves, or that nature may rule by her own laws, 
 for a time, the peregrines shall be spared this year at least, then I 
 think that a noble thing has been said, and one which will never 
 bring regret with it to the heart of a British sportsman. 
 
 * This was written early in the summer of 1868. 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 75 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOME TRIFLING ANECDOTES. 
 
 It is sometimes difficult when one has made a promise to fulfil it, 
 and I confess that, having just turned over in my mind the hawking 
 anecdotes which I intended to offer my readers, I am disappointed 
 at finding them so trivial, and so few and far between. A circum- 
 stance may strike one as singular and worth relating at the time of 
 its occurrence, which, when looked back upon, may appear bald and 
 ordinary enough. In fact, I must not confine myself in this chapter 
 to strict anecdote, or I shall make only a few paragraphs of it. 
 
 I once lost a merlin for three months, and at the end of that time 
 it was brought to me in a basket, alive and well, having been 
 captured, only a couple of miles or so from the house, in a rather 
 singular manner. I have mentioned the incident before, but so 
 long ago that perhaps it will bear repetition. Some of the farmer 
 lads about here set snares for fieldfares in the winter, after the 
 following manner; and in describing it I make no hesitation in 
 quoting a few lines of what I wrote in 1859 : " The snare is made 
 thus : A straight round piece of a branch is cut, from any tree of 
 tough wood, about two or three feet in length, and three-quarters of 
 an inch in diameter. Every twig is carefully taken off, and the 
 marks of the knife obliterated. At intervals of about an inch and a 
 quarter small holes are bored with a nail-passer, into which are / 
 inserted the knots of black horse-hair nooses, each made of a length 
 of three hairs, doubled and twisted, so that the noose is of six hairs' 
 strength, except at the loop. The opened noose is perhaps three 
 inches in diameter. Little" pegs driven into the holes, over the 
 knote, make matters secure. One end of the stick is forked, the 
 
76 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 other notched. Two small bunches of mountain-ash berries are 
 fastened to the stick, some little distance apart, and so as to hang 
 under the nooses. A rather naked tree is now selected in a spot 
 frequented by the birds : a forked branch of the tree is found, 
 cleared of twigs, and forced to bend apart a little, in order that it 
 may receive, when released, the inserted snare with a tight embrace. 
 On one of these snares my merlin was caught : nothing could have 
 been a purer accident. There was no bait which could attract him, 
 unless he mistook the berries for raw meat, which is very unlikely. 
 Of course, I expected to hear that some small bird was hanging in 
 one of the nooses, and that the hawk came to him ; but no such 
 thing," — and so on. The fact is, the hawk happened to settle in the 
 tree, and chose what he thought was a horizontal, and therefore a 
 comfortable, bough : that bough was the snare, and the capture was 
 certainly curious, as the chances against such a thing occurring 
 must have been very considerable indeed. Of course he was caught 
 by the legs. This bird was on the wing again, and flying larks for 
 me, only a fortnight after he was taken. 
 
 It is well known how birds pursued by a hawk will dash into a 
 room through an open window, or even through the glass. I have 
 had one or two windows broken by pigeons in making their escape, 
 and a ring-ouzel was once taken by a merlin of mine as it flew against 
 the pane without breaking it. That merlin was at liberty about the 
 house for weeks together, and would come to hand whenever I 
 opened the window and called her with some food. I used to take 
 her into the room, feed her, and then let her go again. 
 
 Two rather singular terminations of a flight occurred to me in 
 pigeon-flying, and one with grouse. I had flown the Princess at a 
 pigeon — out of the game season — and felt sure that she had killed it 
 somewhere near the house. The flight was only about half a mile. 
 I looked in vain for some time till the bell guided me to the hawk 
 shed, under which the pigeon had dashed for safety, and there was 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 77 
 
 the falcon eating' it close to her own block, so that anyone passing 
 would have thought she was fastened by her leash in the ordinary 
 way. The end of another flight with another hawk, was , I knew, 
 somewhere near a farmhouse ; and, after some search, an old man 
 came out to say that the falcon was eating a pigeon on the table in 
 the " parlour." And so she was. The two birds must have flown 
 close together up the narrow entrance-passage, turned through an 
 open door to the left, and got into this unused room. And unused 
 many of these "parlours" are, except on very grand occasions. 
 Some of us remember Albert Smith's description of the same sort 
 of rooms in Broek, into which the mistress of the house went every 
 Saturday, when she rubbed, polished, dusted, washed, and cleaned 
 in every possible way, then put the key into her pocket, and never 
 opened the door till that day week. 
 
 The grouse I spoke of simply dashed into a room of this house, 
 through an open window, and was taken. I saw the flight, and was 
 afraid the falcon would strike the house in her rapid progress ; both 
 birds were making for the middle of it, and the hawk escaped injury 
 by adroitly shooting up the side when she was within a few yards of 
 the stones. 
 
 I once took up a falcon which I found, at the end of a flight, with 
 a pigeon in each foot. This, like many other things, would be won- 
 derful indeed without the explanation, and, like them, very simple 
 when it is given. The flight ended in my coach house, into which 
 the dovecote pigeons, seeing the hawk coming, had dashed together 
 with the proper quarry; all, therefore, were no doubt huddled 
 together in a comer, and the hawk's second foot was hardly intended 
 to grasp the second pigeon. 
 
 It is not uncommon with some few falcons to knock your hat oflf, 
 or to strike the dog, if game is not found soon enough ; and I once 
 had my wideawake carried from my head by a female sparrowhawk, 
 who began to dig her claws into it when she got it on the ground. 
 
78 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 To show what lumd a hawk may be got into by constant flying, I 
 may mention that I saw a falcon of mine, after flying some kestrels 
 eagerly for Beveral minutes, after leaving them for a grouse, which 
 she lost in a wood, after flying a rook over a long space of open 
 ground and losing it in cover, came back, and from a pitch over my 
 head, fly and kill a grouse which I sprung from under my feet. This 
 was Maid o' the Mist. And Islay once killed an old cock grouse after 
 a two-mile flight. In this latter instance, however, my only wonder is, 
 that anything could possibly live before Islay for that space : and I 
 can only explain the fact by supposing that the old grouse fell under 
 her foot without a blow (not an uncommon thing with experienced 
 grouse) once or twice in the flight, and so put the hawk out ; getting 
 up again with his quick little wings when she was quite low, he 
 would dash off at full speed, leaving her to get into her swing again, 
 and too near the ground to do so easily. It took us an hour and a 
 half, I think, to find the hawk on this occasion, and she was even 
 then on what was left of the grouse, with a very full crop indeed. 
 
 I have twice had peregrines sent home in a basket by well-meaning 
 people who managed to catch them on their quarry, and, imagining 
 that the hawks were lost, though they were doing me a service. 
 After a time, however, the neighbourhood understands one's ways — 
 indeed, some of the people become respectable falconers ; and then 
 these little accidents don't happen. It is, I need hardly say, a 
 difficult thing to look pleasant when one sees the bent feathers of 
 the wing and tail.. Still, if no feather is really broken, " a little 
 (hot) water clears us of this deed." 
 
 One morning, looking out of my bedroom window to find my five 
 merlins, which were at hack, I counted, to. my surprise, six on the 
 garden wall. The stranger was a nestling bred on some of the 
 moors near, I suppose, though I can never hear of a nest ; and, I am 
 ashamed to say, we so bungled matters that we did not catch her. 
 
 I put out a merlin on a block in the field, and thus frightened her, 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 79 
 
 though merlins are easy birds to catch. A peg buried among the 
 grass, a round stone for a seat for the decoy hawk, a bow-net well 
 covered with a little grass, and the feathers of a thrush, or some 
 such bird ; a small bird, alive, if possible, under the net ; perhaps 
 the snare mentioned above, cleverly set — these things would have 
 given an account of the stray hawk, most likely. The diflBlculties 
 would have been to have kept the hack merlins away from the 
 net, and to have got a live bird in time. However, a dead one would 
 most likely have answered, and the only chance of preventing the 
 hack merlins from being troublesome would have been to gorge 
 them from the lures as much as possible. 
 
 Hawk catching, I should think, must be exciting and amusing 
 work when you don't sit all day in a mud hut waiting for the appear- 
 ance of a bird. I have to go through it every year in a very mild 
 form — I speak of taking young peregrines up from their hack. 
 Some are taken most easily, even without a net, but others require 
 a long string and considerable care. I only once had an accident, 
 and then a falcon lost one of her claws, but she did not make a bird 
 of any consequence. 
 
 I am not sure whether it is generally known that merlins will 
 take mice and cockchafers. I have seen them catch both ; the latter 
 are f airier hawked, and I think I have seen the hawk put down his 
 beak to his foot to kill or eat while he was upon the wing. Hobbies, 
 we all know, are great insect catchers. 
 
 Hawks at hack, especially merlins, are very easily killed when 
 bathing. At such a time they take little notice of a stranger, and 
 he may come, if he is so disposed, within a few yards of a bathing 
 bird, and kill it with a stone. I remember looking out of my window 
 early in the morning some years ago, and enjoying the sight of 
 two hack merlins at their ablutions in the brook. Presently a per- 
 son with very scanty clothing and no shoes, a regular tramp, came 
 lounging along. Suddenly he stopped, and made a dead point for 
 
80 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 an instant ; then he carefully lowered his whole person, and picked 
 up a stone. In another instant his arm would have been lifted, but 
 I made so unearthly a shout from the window that he dropped the 
 stone, and walked forward with a briskness utterly foreign to his 
 nature, never turning his head for a moment. As a rule, people are 
 very good to hawks at hack ; they like to see them play, and they 
 take an interest in the thing. 
 
 As I feared, at the opening of this chapter, would be the case, 
 I have had nothing startling, and I fear little interesting, to relate 
 in the way of incident and anecdote ; and I am glad to finish it. 
 Besides, a thunder-storm is coming this way. It distracts one 
 terribly. Let me go out on the lawn and smoke ; I shall be all 
 right when the first great drops come, and lie aa large as florins on 
 the flags. 
 
HOW J BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IS CHIEFLY ON THE GOSHAWK. 
 
 The thunder-storm passed over my neighbourhood on Tuesday, the 
 19th of May, but it did not come well down. The first lightnings 
 which I saw dimly in Derbyshire and Staffordshire scarcely fulfilled 
 their promise; and when the rain reached here, though it was 
 welcomed with thankfulness and blessings, we were disappointed 
 that it did not pour more thoroughly. It was indeed delightful 
 while it lasted ; it was like those sermons, so curiously rare, which, 
 occupying a full half-hour in their delivery, leave one sorrowing 
 that they are so short. It was unlike them only in a third parti- 
 cular ; for to me the charm of a storm begins with its anticipation, 
 is continued while it lasts, and is consummated in the relief that it is 
 over. It is awful, but it is most glorious, to be " dazzled by the 
 livid-flickering fork, and deafened with the stammering cracks and 
 claps : " 
 
 Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent. 
 Moaning and calling out of otlier lands. 
 Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more 
 To peace. 
 
 I think to sit out of doors, and to listen to that " moaning and 
 calling out of other lands," when all is over, when the earth smells 
 fresh from the rain, and all the sweetbriars and gillyflowers are 
 alive with fragrance, is to pick out of existence, for our great 
 enjoyment, some of its mos.t golden hours. 
 
 I wrote no more that evening, poor as the storm was. Let us look 
 for a tempest some day, to be more idle in still ! But I thought that 
 I had not done much to amuse, in the last of these chapters, those 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 people who look at them ; and that I should be only wise were I to 
 consider how I might finish the subject with something better 
 worth reading. 
 
 This, I think, is the last article of anything like a series which I 
 shall write on falconry. I am painfully conscious that I have worn 
 the subject threadbare, and whether it be so or not, I write under 
 an oppression in the conviction. Besides, I am beginning to tire of 
 the place in which I have learned the greater part of my lesson — 
 certainly all the grouse-hawking part. The incumbent of a wretchedly 
 poor living, who has been shut out of the world for twelve years, who 
 has lived all that time in what are called " the wilds of Cheshire," 
 may well find an excuse for saying that he is not altogether satisfied 
 with his lot. I remember how I revelled in the wildness of this place 
 when I first came to it — how I thought that I could never tire of the 
 hills and heather ; but the time has come when the wilderness begins 
 to seem too wild, and when the isolation becomes painful. I should 
 like to get back again to the midland or southern counties ; I should 
 like to come a little nearer civilisation. Not but that I should leave 
 with regret several friends here ; friends who, living some miles from 
 this place, have yet taken pains to give me many glimpses of society 
 — have done more than that — have been most hearty, hospitable, 
 and genial. My horse brings me to their houses, but not without a 
 struggle ; for these are not roads to trifle with, and a beast must be 
 sure-footed indeed who passes them without tripping. However, 
 let me be thankful that I am not in a town. Matters might be 
 worse ; and one can't help having some hope or dream, not very 
 definite, but never quite absent, which pictures some good straggling 
 house near a small village, where it is possible to have a little 
 commerce with the civilised world. I wish some good Christian 
 would offer me such a living. But can I, more than Sisyphus, place 
 the stone on the top of the mountain ? It is the old tale — vetant leges 
 Jovis. 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 83 
 
 I ought to apologise if in giving my hiatory as a falconer I have 
 become too biographical, and made it, in the last paragraph, too 
 generally personal. Let me, however, avoid such an error in future 
 by going at once into the subject which is to occupy the greater part 
 of this chapter — viz., that of the goshawks. 
 
 My first feeling about hawking was, I well remember, that I should 
 like to carry a bird on my hand which would dash off it on occasion, 
 much after the manner of greyhounds from the slips ; and when I 
 was told that the chief excellence of a peregrine consisted in the 
 height of its pitch, and that the glorious thing was to see it start 
 out of the sky after its quarry, I was very much disappointed. I 
 thought I should never care for a system of flying which placed 
 the trained bird at such a distance from its master. The flying from 
 a pitch seemed to me, when considered as a part of sport — which is 
 to an extent artificial — too like nature, and too little like art ; while 
 flying from the fist, or " at the bolt " as it is called, had the charm 
 which I seemed to have sought in falconry, for there was the disci- 
 plined animal positively leaving the touch of your glove to pursue 
 the flying quarry. 
 
 Perhaps I have not entirely overcome that feeling now, though I 
 am a thorough game hawker, and consider a stoop from a great 
 height not only one of the finest and most invigorating sights in 
 the world, but as the result of our art at its very highest. Yet we 
 must not forget, in all our worship of the peregrine after game, 
 that in heron-hawking the falcon starts from the fist. Of course, 
 in that great sport there are numberless stoops — more, probably* 
 than in any other, except lark-hawking — but the first flight is not 
 from above. I am sorry that I know nothing practically of heron- 
 hawking ; still I can realise it all from beginning to end. 
 
 However, my first love, and that perhaps of others in their 
 early days of falconry, finds its home in the goshawk; for this 
 bird, like the sparrowhawk and merlin, starts from your hand, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 HOW 1 BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 or at any rato from some tree near you, at once after the 
 quarry. 
 
 The first goshawk I had here was not mine ; it was most kindly 
 lent me for a good many months — indeed I think for more than a 
 year — by a gentleman who lives near Ware. This was a fine female 
 bird, injured in her plumage, and with a little blot in the yellow of 
 one of her eyes, which, however, did not in the least touch the sight, 
 nor do I think it reached the pupil at all. I killed many rabbits with 
 her, both wild and bagged, and one hare about three-fourths grown. 
 The account of that flight I gave fully in "Falconry: its Claims, 
 History, and Practice," and will not repeat it. 
 
 My goshawks, though of course showing sometimes the natural 
 sulkiness of disposition almost peculiar to the species, or shared 
 with it by the sparrowhawk, were uncommonly tame and amiable 
 birds when in a good humour. The one of which I speak used to 
 play with my watch chain, tossing the seal from her with her beak^ 
 and catching it, taking me by the button in a very familiar manner. 
 Another bird, a female, would come to hand eagerly from a tree or 
 wall, fifty yards off, when in real flying order ; and once, on a cold 
 frosty night, tucked her head under my beard as I was carrying her 
 home from a distance. 
 
 But notwithstanding that goshawks properly trained will come 
 to hand, I like to accustom them to fly on occasion to the lure, and 
 for this reason ; the best bird amongst them may (good judge as you 
 may be of her present humour) sometimes a little deceive you, and 
 not be quite in the flying order you expected when you took her 
 from the perch. In this condition she may possibly, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of trees, plague you a good deal about coming directly to 
 hand ; and it is then, having no rabbit or pigeon with you perhaps 
 that you will find the ordinary falcon's lure very useful. Still; you 
 can almost always tell when a goshawk is in what they call *' yarak,' 
 i.e., simply in a good temper, decidedly hungry, and eager for 
 
HOW 1 BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 quarry. She givea two or three screams at your approach ; sets out 
 her feathers, making herself look larj^o ; has a most peculiar look in 
 her yellow eyes — a sorb of mixture of earnestness and amiability ; 
 and perhaps rouses herself and begins to pick her plumage — 
 "prunes" herself as they call it— when on your glove. Beware of 
 the opposite symptoms. It is of no use taking her from her perch if 
 slie gives a chirping sound, very different from the scream ; if she 
 has a wild eye with contracted pupil ; if she makes herself look 
 small, by closing all her feathers tightly round her. 
 
 To get a goshawk into " yarak " requires very considerable judg- 
 ment and experience. She must not be under-fed, or she will not 
 have her full power ; nor over-fed, or perhaps she won't look at the 
 quarry ; and she wants society as much nearly as the sparrowhawk 
 does — that bird so curiously, except in its length of leg, herself in 
 miniature. . 
 
 I never hooded these birds ; but I think it would be found useful 
 to make them endure the hood moderately well. However, except 
 in travelling, or when very hungry, they are much better without it. 
 Indeed, nothing whatever could be done with a goshawk which was 
 kept hooded many hours in the day. This bird, I repeat, wants 
 society to keep it in anything like order — I mean the presence of 
 people, dogs, and so on. The noise of sharpening a scythe, or of 
 carriage or cart wheels, too, drives it wild till it learns by habit not 
 to dread them. But it should be accustomed to all manner of 
 sights ; and I really don't know whether the neighbourhood of a 
 croquet-lawn would not be a good place for the bow-perch, thoagh 
 certainly not till the hawk had been carried on the fist close to the 
 players for some days, else it would bate too violently. 
 
 But once in "yarak," no devices need be resorted to; simple 
 work will do everything. Alternate beef- steak and rabbit with the 
 fur on is the best food. One-third or more of a crop of one of these 
 daily — more rabbit perhaps than beef — with a gorge every fifth day 
 
86 
 
 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 or (with many birds) every fourth, is about what ought to be done to 
 get a goshawk into "yarak," as far as the mere feeding goes. And 
 my own experience is that they, and all hawks, fly best on the day 
 after they have had a moderate feed of fresh beefsteak. The 
 carrying which was required to get the bird in order, and was then 
 perhaps somewhat irksome, is, of course, a necessary part of the 
 sport when she is in flying condition, and, together with the whole 
 affair, keeps her in "yarak." 
 
 I never had any experience with the jerfalcons ; and, next to the 
 peregrine, I like the goshawk. She is a most companionable bird, 
 and can be flown in the moat inclosed country, and where a pere- 
 grine would be of but little service. I have taken rabbits with these 
 birds in the open fields, in woods, and amongst rocks, with and 
 without ferrets, and I confess to a great liking for the sport. If 
 I lived in an inclosed and wooded country, I should think one of 
 these hawks almost a necessary of life. 
 
 They are soon broken to the ferret, especially if a white one is 
 used, and will wait with a curious patience till the rabbit bolts ; 
 then they leave the hand in an instant, and some little care is 
 necessary to ensure your not holding the jesses even one thought 
 too long. In a wood, if the first rabbit is missed, you will probably 
 have the next flight from a tree in which the hawk has settled, and 
 you will generally find that one a kill. I think, however, I like the 
 open the best, where the rabbits are kicked out of rushes or tufts 
 of grass ; and, as I intimated in the first chapter, your hawk will 
 look most anxiously for the result of each kick. 
 
 The best hold to get of the rabbit is one foot on the head, the 
 other well behind the shoulder, on the loins if possible ; the worst 
 on the rump. Most goshawks fly at the head, but I have known the 
 antipodes made for time after time ; and this is most provoking, as 
 the quarry is almost sure to escape. An old buck rabbit is no joke 
 even in the feet of a female goshawk, and must be held in the best 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 87 
 
 way. The male bird is too small for full-grown rabbits, and should 
 be kept entirely for pheasants, landrails, water-hens, and perhaps 
 young partridges. The goshawk is a very slow bird, and a pheasant 
 once thoroughly in the swing of its flight will often beat it hollow. 
 The best chance is at the rise, and if the hawk is in a tree that 
 chance is very considerable. Undoubtedly too you may kill a passing 
 pheasant, especially if you are above it. 
 
 I never threw the hinder parts of a rabbit to a goshawk on its 
 perch — only the head and shoulders. On the fist, she may be fed 
 with the hind legs, because there is nothing very distinctive about 
 them when in your hand. 
 
 I have spoken of flying from trees, and certainly the position 
 attained on a bough is better than that on the falconer's hand ; but 
 a young bird should be flown in the open. The fist is quite a good 
 enough position to kill from, and if a bird gets into the habit of 
 taking to trees, she may tease your life out by stopping there an 
 hour at a time, utterly regardless of all your allurements. A live 
 rabbit, however, or a live pigeon in a string, if she has killed a few 
 such pigeons, will bring her down, she being really hungry j and, 
 unless she is hungry, as I said before, she has no business in the 
 field at all. 
 
 No goshawk ever attempted to injure me, except by flying at my 
 legs when she was on food at the bow-perch ; a real squeeze from 
 such terrible feet would be serious ; but I have never suffered any 
 inconvenience from them. Still, after the accident with Islay, I 
 feel the necessity of being careful with some of the larger hawks ; 
 and I had very much rather that a piece of food did not slip out of 
 my hand when a hungry goshawk was feeding upon it before I had 
 secured the jesses. I once thought of trying the male golden eagle 
 with hares and rabbits, but I don't care to run any risk j neither, 
 I think, would such a bird be safe with children. Let me also 
 say that very little ohildren should not be allowed to go 
 
88 
 
 HOW T BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 near a goshawk's bow-percb, especially if the bird is feed- 
 ing; for what would reach a man's leg might reach a child's 
 face. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to say that, in all probability, the first goshawk 
 which a man has will disappoint him. Though very nice birds when 
 well trained and in " yarak," they are most sulky and temper- try- 
 ing at other times. But carriage on the fist, low feeding except 
 on gorge days (which must certainly not be passed over), a public 
 position for the bow-perch, and then plenty of work, make them all 
 right ; and when a man can kill with one bird three or four rabbits, 
 or even on occasion double that number, in a morning's walk, he will 
 think the result worth all the initiatory trouble. 
 
 Goshawks will stand a good deal of exposure to cold, but not too 
 much. I once had one dreadfully cramped in the winter — she was 
 an old bird, too ; but the winter was very severe. Both her feet 
 were " doubled up,'* so to speak, and remained in that state till 
 we tried goose grease. And a most wonderful remedy it was ; it 
 suddenly made her as nearly well as might be. 
 
 These birds may be kept without much expense, especially where 
 rabbits are to be got for nothing. I most earnestly, however, advise 
 some beef of the best kind. Eats, if fairly caught — i.e., free from all 
 suspicion of having been poisoned — are very well occasionally ; and 
 the leg of an old hen is a nice change. The heads and necks of 
 fowls which are used in the house should be reserved, unplucked, by 
 all falconers, as they cost nothing, and are very respectable food. 
 
 In no systematic way, subject to no particular dates, bit by bit, 
 I have now told my friends " how I became a falconer." They have 
 seen me with hawks of different kinds, bungling and disappointed 
 at the beginning, but quite as successful as I ever hoped to be, 
 towards the middle and at the end. If any stranger to the sport 
 should read these chapters, and choose to make an attempt at 
 falconry, he will have no reason to be discouraged, for I have told 
 
HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
 
 89 
 
 him the truth most strictly — I have not smoothed one difficulty in the 
 relating it. I have only warned him against mistakes into which I 
 fell, and which he may avoid. 
 
 And in saying " Good bye," I can only add that I shall always be 
 glad to help others, as I was helped years ago, by the friend to whom 
 I referred in the first chapter of this series. 
 
 To that friend I dedicate, now that IJam saying farewell to 
 falconry on paper, these five chapters especially — because they, in 
 some measure, record ^the result of his instructions ; and, indeed, 
 without his disinterested kindness at the beginning, which led to 
 our close friendship towards the i^nd, I should not have been able 
 to write anything at all. 
 
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 St. Louis 17, Mo. 
 
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