CORNELL meeeanne. | WILLIAM D. SARGENT Collection © cA Gift to the Laboratory of Ornithology + 5 CORNELL LAB of ORNITHOLOGY i a 3) LIBRARY at Sapsucker Woods > Illustration of Bank Swallow by Louis Agassiz Fuertes FALCONRY LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE MsAGPIB FALCONRY ITS CLAIMS, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE BY GAGE EARLE EREEMAN, M.A. ao AND FRANCIS HENRY SALVIN CAPTAIN WEST YORK RIFLES To which are added REMARKS ON TRAINING THE OTTER AND CORMORANT BY CAFTAIN SALVIN “ Dominion over the Fowle of the Air” LONDON LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS 1859 ORNITH SAR GENT Sk 32 | ag Dedication TO THE MEMORY Or wHat Fatconry WaAs AND TO THE HOPE Or wat 1r May Be THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED BY THE AUTHORS PREFACE. Tue history of this work may be very concisely told in the words of an extract from Messrs. Longman’s “ Notes on Books” for last May :—‘“ The papers of which it consists were originally written by ‘Pere- grine’ for the Feld, with the view of making British gentlemen familiar with all the details of a sport once so general, though now neglected and nearly forgotten. The papers have been carefully revised ; and, in preparing them for the press, the author had access to occasional Notes drawn up by Captain Salvin, and was also indebted for many valuable hints to the experience of that keen falconer, who now shares with ‘ Peregrine’ the responsibility of this publication. . . . To the ‘Falconry’ are added some remarks on the training of the Otter and: Cormorant, from the pen of Captain Salvin, who writes from his own practice.” _To my old and kind friend, Mr. Brodrick, to whom I was indebted, many years ago, for a know- ledge of the rudiments of the art of Falconry, this book owes something; and I take this opportunity of thanking, in the name of Captain Salvin and in A4d vill PREFACE. my own, Sir Molyneux Nepean, Bart., Mr. Newcome, and others, for the kind interest which, at the cost of some trouble to themselves, they have shown in our undertaking. The long letter from an officer serving in India has been gratefully received, and I am sure will be found most interesting. “ Falconry in the British Isles,” with its numerous and masterly drawings, is out of print; but the present work, although it does not follow its pre- decessor in giving a figure of each species of hawk used in Falconry, contains several plates from the excellent and well-known pencil of Mr. Wolf, some of which illustrate the implements necessary for the practice of the sport. The very great kindness which I have received from a considerable number of readers during the last few years emboldens me to unmask ; but I still hope to be recognised in the Meld under the old nom de plume of “ Peregrine.” In saying one word on the character of this book, it may not be unwise to remind some of those who may care to observe in what manner our subject has been treated, that I wish “ Falconry” to come before them, not only as a sport which is slowly making its way among the gentlemen of these islands, but as a gallant venerable friend, whom our forefathers loved with all their hearts,— who, like all his kith and kin, left his impress upon the character of our PREFACE. ix race, and whom, in the last stage of his destitution, we have just agreed not utterly to forget or ignore. I may add to this, that the following pages have been written with reference to the Natural History of the birds of which they treat, as well as with the intention of showing the process of their training, and the method of using them in the field. It will readily be granted, I think, that a falconer has more opportunity than any other man of ob- serving, not only the “manners and customs,” but the characters of hawks; and few will disagree with the Rev. J. G. Wood when he remarks, in that ex- cellent little work of his, “ My Feathered Friends,” that the true object of Natural History is “to bring forward the character or life of the creature, which is, in fact, its essential being.” This opinion, indeed, recommends itself at once ; and I hope it will be found in this treatise that, not only have I given the character of each species by writing directly upon it, but that I have also inci- dentally illustrated and exemplified it whilst my pen has been more pointedly employed upon the leading object of these chapters, — viz. the training and management of hawks, — or, in other words, the “practice” of Falconry. In giving the character of any kind of hawk, one is, of course, obliged to treat it as it appears when the bird is in a semi-captivity, and as it is developed by training. Indeed, there can hardly be any other circumstances than those x PREFACE. belonging to the domestic state, under which the dispositions and tempers of these, or any birds, can be exhibited. We understand them better in friend- ship than in enmity,—near than at a distance; for it must not be for a moment imagined that hawks lose their specific or individual characters when they become our friends and servants; these are surely retained, and no falconer wishes to destroy them; he only takes care that they are kept under command ; and, generally, that they are rendered subservient. It is true that when, for instance, we say a species or an individual is “docile,” we speak of a part of its character which is, in a certain sense, artificial and acquired ; but we must remember that there was a foundation on which alone the superstructure of “ docility” could have been built; and, therefore, from the ease with which we tamed or trained the birds in our possession, we argue correctly concern- ing a certain, though a latent, character which is resident in their unreclaimed brethren. There can, therefore, be hardly a Naturalist in the world who, whatever he may think of the sport in the abstract, will not allow that Falconry is at least a devoted and faithful servant to one branch of ornithology,—the great family of the Accipitres. G. ELF. “ Peregrine.” Wild Boar Clough Parsonage, : E ? Cheshire: August, 1859. CONTENTS. CHAPTER L Page Falconry.—Its Claims a 3 : : > Sal CHAPTER II Its History 3 . : : ; : » 19 CHAPTER III. Little generally known about Hawks.—The “ blue” Hawk.— Peter Bell. — Long-winged and Short-winged Hawks, — Hard Names not much affected by modern Falconers. — Terms used in Falconry.— The young Falconer to begin with few Hawks.—One Tiercel.— An only Hawk.—An only Parrot which “talks like a Christian.”— An out-of-doors Companion.— A Brace of Partridges.—“ Little Meets.”— Hawking Clubs. 4 . : : 3 34 CHAPTER IV. The Peregrine Falcon (Falco Peregrinus). — Natural History of the Bird. —Mode of taking the Nest.—Rearing of Eyesses. — Bells and Jesses.— The Lure. — Falconers’ Cries. — “Carrying” prevented. — Flying at Hack.— Taking up the Hawks.— Glove.— Hoods.—Swivels—Leash.—Block . 50 * xil CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. The Peregrine (continued).—Presence of Strangers, Dogs, &c. —Wonders accomplished in a few Weeks. — Hawks taken up from Hack, and broken to the Hood.—Not to be teased. — Lesson in “ Waiting on.”—Entering to Pigeons.—* Carrying” again.—“ Waiting on” again.— What the Tyro may expect from his Birds. — Glimpse of Chapters VI. and VII. 3 CHAPTER VI. “Daily Management of trained Peregrines when at Home, as shown in the Practice of Falconers; and a Plan for it recommended. — Fine and stormy Weather.— The Perch or Screen.—“ Gorge Night.”— Castings. — Feeding. — Bathing. —Imping.—Wire Fences.—Spurious and true Sportsmen.— A lost Hawk.— The Voices of the Past . CHAPTER VII. The Haggard Peregrine. — Mrs. Glasse. —Hawk-catching in Holland.—The Bow-net.—How to cook the Hare.—The Brail.—Training (properly so called) of Peregrines concluded CHAPTER VIII. The First of September. — Breakfast.—Flasks, — Mr. Brown and “Peregrine” shoot till Luncheon.—Hawks go to the Page 68 80 96 Field.—_Cadge.—-A Grouse is killed.—Brown and Robinson disport themselves in a manner worthy of Makololo.—More Captures. — A false Point. — The Ladies. —-Our Bag. — Lecture.— The Toys . - a CHAPTER Ix. An Essay on “ Sport.”——-Magpie-hawking.—No Dogs.—Hunt- ing Whips.—Eyess Tiercels to be used.—The sort of Country : necessary.—A fair sprinkling of Magpies better than a great a 107 CONTENTS. quantity.— The sort of Weather.— The Falconer and his “ Field." The Magpie. —The Flight.— The “Tail.”— Magpie-hawking in Ireland, — Rook-hawking. — Bagged Birds : . . . . . . CHAPTER X. The “Chivalry” of Falconry has, in w measure, spoiled its Practice. — Heron-hawking (a Lesson), — Heron-hawking (a Narrative) : . , CHAPTER XI. The Peregrine (concluded). — Recapitulation. — Desultory Matter. — Incidental Flights . ri CHAPTER XII. The Merlin (Falco esalon). — Classification. — Breeding. — Plumage, general Appearance, Size, &c. — Disposition. — Reference to Chapter IV. Ruby’s” Desertion and singular Capture. —A good Snare. — Hoods. — Bells and Jesses. — Housing the Birds.—Famine and Damp.—*“ Pearl” and “Emerald” 3 . i ‘ . CHAPTER XUL Is entirely on Lark-hawking with Merlins CHAPTER XIV. Merlin (concluded). —-Kept to a particular Quarry. —How to choose a Hen Merlin which is intended for large Quarry. — Entering to Pigeons and Partridges.— Merlin and Magpie. —Ring-ouzel_—Blackbirds and Thrushes.— Snipe.— Plover. Landrail. — Quail. — Merlin on the Wing. — Recapitulation of the Character of the Merlin. The Hobby.—Nest.—Description of the Bird.—Bad and good Qualities, and (possibly) great Efficiency, with a fair Trial xili Page 123 138 161 178 192 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. Page The Goshawk (Astur palumbarius).—Description, as to Colour, of the Bird. —Generic Appellations. —Further Description. —Where found.—A “True Hawk,” with Explanations. — Flown from the Hand. — Large Quarry. —Flown “to the ‘River,” &c.— Temper.— Where procured. — Cost.—Advan- tages.—Disadvantages,—Training.—Not Hooded in modern Practice. —The Bow-perch.—Yarak. . - - 210 CHAPTER XVI. The Goshawk (concluded).—* Yarak.”—What Quarry flown _at in Britain. — Entering. — Belled on the Tail.—Flown at Liberty to bagged Quarry.—To wild Quarry.—Lure good on occasion. — With Ferrets.—Hare-hawking.—< Vampire” and Hare. —What has been done.—Pheasant-hawking. — Partridge-hawking. — Summary.— Moulting ri . 223 CHAPTER XVIL The Sparrow hawk (Accipiter nisus).—Its Natural History.— Character, with Illustrations, &c.—Sir John Sebright’s Sparrow-hawk.—Haggard.—The Eyess.—Training.—Hints on “Carriage.”— Feeding occasionally at the Bow-perch and Screen.—The next Chapter . . . . 237 CHAPTER XVIIL The Sparrow-hawk (concluded). — Le ters. — More Facts. — Gale’s Management of the Sparrow-hawk. — Blackbird, Partridge, and other Flights.—Merlin and Water-hen.— Quail. —- The Sparrow-hawk has accomplished sdmirens. — The Dead Hawker (a true Tale) . . * » 256 CHAPTER XIX. Jer-faleons.—The Norway Falcon.—The Iceland and Green- land Falcons.—Lord Angus’s “ White Hawk.”—Flying the Icelander—Sacre.—Lanner.—Barbary Falcon.—Kestrel,— The Future . . $ . ‘ . 271 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER XX. P The ugliest and the last.—Inquiries.—Cats, &¢.—Moulting.— er Mews.—After the Moult.—Pharmacopceia.—Cramp.—A po- plexy.—Epilepsy. — The Kecks.— The Frounce. — Small Tumours on the Feet.—Inflammation of the Crop— Worms. —Rangle.—The Blain.—Fractures.—Parasites.—A Purge, and Castings.—A Friend’s Answer on a subject of Antiquity. —Indian Hawks and Hawking.—Management of Hawks at the Camps.—Farewell a ‘ . ‘ . 286 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction — Its Connexion with China. — Master of the Royal Cormorants in England.—The Dutch appear to have preserved a Knowledge of this mode of Fishing. — Isaac Walton 7 . 7 . . - - 327 CHAPTER IL Where to obtain the Young Ones.—Rearing them.—The Shed, Yard, Tank, or Pond.—Daily Management 5 - 8380 CHAPTER III. Training Cormorants.—Apparatus used in Cormorant-fishing. Daily Management . . - 8 7 - 3833 CHAPTER IV. Field Management. — Concluding Remarks upon the Otter . 343 LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. MaGpin-HAWKING . . : a frontispiece Hawk FourniturE. . . : ‘ to face page 50 FremaLte Gosuawk AND Hare 4 é 5 223 Hawx’s Hoop : . ‘ . 317 A new SwIvEL . i ‘ £g . 320 Cormorant FisHING . . 3 . to face page 327 Cormorant PaLANQuiNn 3 5 i : 339 FALCONRY ITS CLAIMS, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE. CHAPTER I. ITS CLAIMS. I am conscious of using an expression which is not, perhaps, very definite, when I speak of the claims of Falconry. The claims which field sports generally, and in the aggregate, have upon country gentlemen, are frequently discussed ; their importance is gathered easily and at once, and few people indeed are found to gainsay them. Thus, “national character,” “ resi- dent landlords,” “ health,” “ good spirits,” with an infinite number of small sprites attending upon these great genii, are perfectly familiar to us all. We, very properly, take them for granted, receive them in right of their privileges, vaunt them to our neigh- bours, and then, excellent as they are, we hunt, and shoot, and fish, without any immediate reference to them at all, but simply because we like hunting, shooting, and fishing. B 2 FALCONRY. The claims of any individual sport might pro- bably be made to appear distinctly and with effect by _ comparing them with the claims or characteristics of some sister amusement, especially with those which should seem weak or objectionable. To do this, however, in any other way than by an incidental comparison would be ill-natured; and, as the choice of a favourite sport is, after all, very much a matter of taste, it would be absurd. Therefore I shall simply make this chapter a vehicle for placing Falconry before the public in a light which I know its friends will approve, a light reflected entirely from its own history and its own merits.—Not that I trust to an introductory chapter in any great degree as & means of making proselytes; that office I assign to detail; I assign it to the incidents of the sport, which will be found in their proper places in this book; but, above all, I assign it to those gentlemen who have land and hawks, and means to boot, and who can excite more enthusiasm, in a couple of hours, by an exhibition of falconry in the field, than I can hope to create by a whole work on “ Its Claims, History, and Practice.” Antiquity !—I can scarcely hope that all who may read these pages will care for it, or perhaps, to speak more correctly, I can scarcely think they will confess that they esteem it of consequence. I am sorry for those who despise antiquity, because I think they lose half a life by living so utterly away from the ITS CLAIMS. 3 past. It is no business of mine to defend the middle ages here —I have no inclination to defend them entirely ; but perhaps we all know where we shall most readily find “that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted free- dom.” The natural mood of a mind wandering back to old times is certainly sober and respectful; some- times indeed there is the light and warmth of a genial and generous enthusiasm, and the conscious- ness of a charm which it is difficult to explain or even to understand. Look at the pride—the honest noble pride—of ancestry! I will engage to say that there are few men of cultivation who, in reality, despise the circumstance of a long and honour- able descent. The true affectation is to disparage, not to confess, its value. Gibbon says that the family of Confucius is the most illustrious in the world,— not only as they are “the lively image of the wisest of mankind,” but because they “have maintained above two thousand two hundred years their peaceful honours and perpetual succession.” What a wonderful chain! And yet fancy each link with its bobbing pig-tail, or flat nose, or pinched limping horse-shoe foot! Only conceive the long line of tea-pots! Think of the oceans of nectar which so many Celestials must have consumed! Make the matter, in short, as absurd as you may; B2 4 FALCONRY. and then confess, after all, that the reverence paid to the representative of that mighty house is scarcely to be numbered among the follies of the Chinese people. So much for antiquity, and its value! My own opinion is, that few men exist who do not, so to speak, take off their hats mentally to so respectable an acquaintance. A friend of mine, it is true, once told me that his love for the sport of Falconry was per- fectly independent of any feeling for antiquity and the middle ages, for which he cared nothing; but I believe he was mistaken. If I could have twisted the yvéOs ceavtov into a wand, and touched him with it on the heart, he would probably have discovered a light leash that bound him to the bells and jesses of another age. Falconry is certainly of high descent, if that be considered a recommendation. It boasts a long line of ancestors, and has claimed and received homage from the chivalry and beauty of many centuries. To what date it can be traced we shall consider in the proper place. I can only here express my strong desire that some ultra game-preserving nobleman, who orders every hawk on his property to be slaugh- tered, could have a few minutes’ conversation with that great grandsire of his of whom he boasts so much. Perhaps the dialogue would run somewhat after this manner : — Ancestor.—A set of arrant rascals, coward knayes ! Robert, my son, art quick, and dost thou heed ? ITS CLAIMS. 5 Art in the flesh ?— E’en as I pass’d the gate, Nigh the portcullis, by the bastion-wall, I spied, with rotten fitchews, pies, and crows, All daub’d with filth, the faleon-gentle tied, Pierced with a nail,—a rusty villain nail._— Wert blind ? — Or didst thou from our turret hang The knave that slew the bird ? — Descendant. — Really now, my dear Sir,—aw!— You are so dreadfully severe. You allude possibly toa “ flying vermin :” they infest the manor, and we trap them: caught alive,— hung by the leg a few days,—serve him right, — kills grouse,— wrung his neck, — aw ! — Ancestor.—A hawk, and hang !—Out, recreant, dotard, out !— But hold ! —I do thee wrong, it cannot be ! SS. Nisus ! — Palumbarius !— Peregrine ! All to my aid ! — How oft, with loving hand, Have I the Pelé* for Falcon-gentle held !— Then, fed, she rouzedt and mantled ;{ and anon Feaked§ on my glove, while I did smoothe her mailes, || Her petty-single{ with a soft plume touched ; Meanwhile, with right good will, she pruned** herself. Full oft I told her of a Hern at seidge ;tt+ Then were we friends ; and when the drowsy night Talk’d to the world of stars in its bright dreams, I loved to deem she jouketh{{ well in it. Descendant.—My dear Sir : What singular gibber —— I mean — beg pardon, —aw ! * Pelt is the dead body of any fowl the hawk hath killed. ¢ Rouze is when a hawk lifteth herself up and shaketh herself. { Manileth is when a hawk stretcheth one of her wings after her legs, and so the other. : § Feaking is when the hawk wipeth her beak after fecding. || Mailes are the breast feathers, Petty-singles are the toes of the hawk. ** Pruneth is when the hawk picketh hersclf. +} Hern at seidge is when you find a hern standing by the water- side, watching for prey, or the like. tt Jouketh is when she sleepeth. Tur GENTLEMAN’s RECREATION, 1677. B3 6 FALCONRY. Here I am quite sure the old gentleman would get so outrageous that I dare not proceed—especially as he speaks in such dreary blank verse. I have a word to say presently on the extermina- tion of the nobler falcons; but before that point is touched, we will glance at claims apart from those of antiquity. I really do not think it too much to assert that many hundreds of people, and not all of them sports- men, have lately become interested in the art of falconry. This conclusion is arrived at in many ways, and in no trifling degree from the numberless letters which I receive from strangers for advice and assistance. And, as public opinion just now cares for the sanction of antiquity least of all earthly things, I conclude that the excellence of the sport itself has not been without its influence in the revival. Falconry came to me accompanied by a charm and a ro- mance which I could not resist; but I like it for itself, and am quite willing to give the second place only to pedigree and a name. It has been too much the habit to assume that a faleoner is a falconer, and nothing else,—that he never shoots, and never throws a fly. It is no such thing. A falconer, to my knowledge, may be as good a shot and as fond of shooting as the man whose whole mind has been forced down the barrels of his gun. I wonder what they would say in Norfolk, for. instance, in answer to the charge that a falconer is only a falconer ! ITS CLAIMS. 7 As for exercise, and intense though healthy excite- ment, if they are not found in falconry they are not found in anything. This is the coursing of the air; —it has the ethereal properties in itself; it is the very fairy-work of sport. And yet it is practical enough: one does not come empty-handed from the field in game hawking; a single goshawk will cer- tainly keep a family. A flight with falcons may last for forty minutes, or it may last for four; all depends upon the quarry flown at. But there is riding or running, and the absolute essence or concentration of excitement in all. The quarry is viewed; and @ la volée! or hooha, ha, ha, ha! is shouted, and taken up by the field. All are at full speed in an instant: they cheer to encourage this hawk or to honour that stoop ;—“ Was there ever such a stroke!” they say; —‘ Money should not buy ‘ Nemesis;’ she is the best falcon of the year!” The quarry is put in, but the good hawks wait above: down they come as it is flushed ; ** Who takes it now?”—and so on to the end. One very great “claim” will, Iam sure, be ad- mitted at once: ladies may, and do now as of old, join in the sport. Iam half jealous of the bow and the target nevertheless; why should they take so many ? Archery isa nice quiet elegant amusement; and to shoot as Robin Hood did in ancient, or as Mr. Ford does in modern, times, must require consummate skill and practice. But I shrewdly suspect that a becom- ing dress and attitude, close companionship, the B-4 8 FALCONRY. oppoitunity of instilling axioms without which fair fingers could do little, run a race, and win it too, with the greatest score and the best gold. There is at least often a very little bow that strikes some- thing better and warmer than the bull’s eye, and does not count for nothing. I honour archery for its antiquity, and admire it for itself—but look at a picture, seldom seen, which I think to be better still. The canter of two or three horses; the scamper behind them of as many spaniels; the gleam of a green habit; the sombre of a grey; a hat clasped with a buckle and heron’s plume; the red and white of a hood; the quiet hawks as they swing by to the easy motion of the horses; the silver bells and silver voices; the freshening colour; the hopeful eye:— Fly “ Black-jesse!” Good hawk! Fly well this day, if you ever flew! For the picture will take deeper colours still when these are flying across the plain. In alluding to the rapid extermination of the nobler falcons, I must urge the “claims” which the sport professes to possess, rather on the forbearance of country gentlemen, than on the time which they devote toamusements. It is said that the peregrine and the merlin are destructive to game on the grouse moors. With regard to the latter hawk, I pledge my long practical knowledge of its habits, that it is utterly unable to kill an old wninjured grouse; but the strongest females may occasionally take wounded or diseased birds, and, I fear, possibly a few back- ITS CLAIMS. 9 ward young ones. The peregrine, however, is con- sidered the more serious culprit of the two, and is persecuted accordingly. If we are to believe some accounts, he takes a grouse a day: and calculations, remarkable chiefly for their ingenuity, have been made to prove, on the plan, I think, of compound interest, how many head one pair would cause to be destroyed in the course of a year. I am not denying that a cast of peregrines on a moor, or moors, of many thousand acres, will kill many grouse; but I object altogether to the doctrine that they will per- ceptibly lessen the bag of the sportsman. I will go farther: I am not sure that, in the end, they will not increase it. : Of course an assertion of this kind, so contrary to received opinions, requires explanation. Let us in- vestigate the matter. And first, as to the probable havoc made by the falcon: the amount of it must depend upon his opportunities. This bird takes his prey on the wing, not on the ground. Now, it has been remarked, not only by falconers, but it is notorious, that game take wing with very great reluctance when a peregrine is above them. In such a case it is sometimes necessary to hunt or beat them up: they dread to trust themselves in the same element with their enemy. It was owing to the knowledge of this that the artificial hawk was in- vented. Neither, as every one knows, is it the habit of game-birds to fly much; their time is spent chiefly 10 FALCONRY. on the ground, either basking or feeding. Man, dog, or sheep may frighten them, and they rise: the sun on a hill side, the absence of wind there, the abundance of food, with other causes, will induce them to move, even if they are not disturbed; but, in comparison with almost all other birds, how very seldom are they on the wing! So long as pigeons, rooks, magpies, crows, &c., pass over the moor, the grouse are in comparative safety. I admit that in the utter absence of such birds as pigeons, and also the egg-stealing birds I have mentioned, some game must be taken by hawks; but, if an old building could be found in the centre of the moors which could be turned into a large dovecote,—or if a rough sub- stantial place, ornamental or otherwise, were set up for the purpose,—the pigeons, which would remain faith- ful to their home even when a few years had rendered them wild, would, in my opinion, save every héalthy grouse from the peregrine falcon. But this perhaps could only be done in the neighbourhood of grain. But there is yet another and a very important light in which this subject must be viewed. All hawks, when they have a choice, invariably choose the easiest flight. This fact is of the last importance in the matter before us: I confess at once that I give it the chief place in this argument. Who has not heard of the grouse disease? It has been attributed, some- times respectively and sometimes collectively, to burnt heather; to heather poisoned from the dress- ITS CLAIMS. Il ings put on sheep; to the sheep themselves cropping the tender shoots and leaves of the plant, and thus destroying the grouse’s food; to the tape-worm; to shot which has wounded but not killed ; and perhaps to qther things beside. It may be, I doubt not, cor- rectly referred to any or to all of these. Of this, however, there appears no question, that, from what- ever cause it spring, it is propagated. A diseased parent produces a diseased child. Now I say that when every hawk is killed upon a large manor the balance of nature is forgotten, or ignored; and that Nature will not overlook an insult. She would have kept her wilds healthy: destroy her ap- pointed instruments, and beware of her revenge ! Leave the peregrine unmolested amongst diseased grouse, and he will kill them nearly all before he touches a healthy bird,—simply because he can’ catch them better. I do not at all intend to recommend “leather” alone for your fortifications; I do not affect to an- nounce a panacea for the grouse disease. What I say with regard to it is simply suggestive. For having given a correct description of the habits of hawks I will be answerable ; and my readers can judge of the probable effect of those habits as well as I can. I fear egg-collectors will scarcely hear me. Should any of them purchase this book in the hope of dis- covering the positions of the eyries, or the range of hills that hold the eggs, of the peregrine falcon, I 12 FALCONRY. imagine that they will be slightly disappointed. My coadjutor and myself beg to bow over this page,;— respectfully indeed, but in silence. We beg to assure them, in the language of young ladies, that we shall ever esteem them as brothers, but we decline a nearer intimacy. Surely all the purposes of natural history can be served, and a cabinet made perfect, by the purchase of eggs from a dealer. These are frequently foreign, though there is no variety in shape, colour, size, or in any other particular; they are absolutely the eggs of the peregrine falcon. They may not be taken from our cliffs; their abstraction may not have tended to make the noblest British bird more scarce in Britain ; it may not have left an anxious scientific sportsman for a whole year without the materials to work upon which are essential to his craft; but possibly the broad elegant drawer, with its neat partitions, may look none the worse for that; and I am sure, to some people at least, there will be a satisfaction in knowing that they are not, in these islands, taking the fruit,— for ages national as the acorn,—while it is yet un- ripe; not quenching life while its spark is just kind- ling under the Great Hand of all; not attacking Nature in the sacred hour of her privacy, when alone she is suppliant and defenceless, Applied to taking the eggs of any bird, I am quite ready to allow that this is all a rhapsody. With a certain innate horror, I confess, of slaying the fetus ITS CLAIMS. 13 under any circumstances, I do not grudge the school- boy his string of trophies; nor do I at all dread one of the ingredients of to-morrow’s pudding. I am writing against extermination, and especially against extermination in a form which a peculiar instinct of our nature teaches us has some latent elements of cowardice and cruelty. Were I permitted to address the landed proprie- tors, and those holding extensive manors, in some parts of England, in Scotland, and in Ireland, on the subject of not warring against the peregrine to exter- mination, I might perhaps speak to them as follows; and in so doing, I should give something like a sum- mary of that portion of the present chapter which I think is the more important : — Gentlemen,—It is said that the peregrine falcon destroys so many grouse that an owner or occupier of moors has no option but to kill him. This subject ‘(of the mischief done by the peregrine) has long been one to which I have given much thought, and applied considerable investigation; and without at all laying claim to infallibility in the matter,—but at the same time pledging my honour that I speak, not only as an advocate, but upon sincere conviction, —I assert my firm belief that the peregrine falcon is often wantonly, and frequently excessively, slandered when he is attacked as a game-destroyer. The accusations which reach you are generally indefinite, or palpably exaggerated. Thus you hear of grouse being wicked 14 FALCONRY. wp, which are said to have been killed by the pere- grine; as if a hawk might be convicted on evidence which is not even circumstantial. Or you are told, as the result of a calculation, that such and such a number of grouse must have been taken by this hawk in such and such a number of days. Who are your informants? If you knew how anxious I am for the proper preservation of game, you would not accuse me of wishing to do an injury or injustice to gamekeepers; but I am bound to remind you that they have every possible motive for exaggerating the injury (if there be an injury) done by any hawk. The more destructive a bird of prey is, the more xdS8os they will deserve for killing it; and the master who sees half a dozen hawks nailed against a wall, while he is addressed by his servant upon the extent and enormity of their depredations, and assured that they represent hundreds of rescued game, naturally per- ceives his hand going down into his pocket, while the keeper rises up in his estimation; and finally he goes home to tell his friends that J. oseph Trapper is a very angel, while the peregrine falcon is the absolute reverse. Even the honest keeper has a temptation to exaggerate in this particular; and for the dishonest keeper, what can possibly be more convenient to him than to explain the absence of game which he ought to have protected by the passing presence of « flying vermin” which he cannot always destroy ? Again, are those who attribute so much destruc- ITS CLAIMS. 15 tion of game to the peregrine, naturalists? Do they know the falcon from the hen-harrier? Are they sure that they catch the rea] culprit ? Well, gentlemen, there are some of you who still disbelieve me; you think I am an enthusiast, and in error. Then to you I would say this:—The pere- grine falcon is pre-eminently a type of speed, strength, and courage; he has, as long as these islands have stood out of the ocean, made his home on their crags ; from time immemorial no link has been broken in the chain of his existence here; your ancestors, for the very purposes of “sport” (in whose name he is now destroyed), protected and defended him; “auld lang syne,” and the traditions of other days, have no influence with you, who yet boast a good race and ancient blood: you coldly calculate how many grouse you may save for your bag by the extermination of the noble fellows who claim from you the hospitality which your fathers were honoured in according them : you are wrong even in your arithmetic: you are at fault in adding up your gains: this destroyer of a few head of sound game kills the diseased birds, and saves your moors from an unhealthy progeny: he, too, destroys the destroyer, for he strikes down mag- pies and hooded crows :—for all this, I know you will banish him, but I entreat you to do so mercifully ; save his life and his limbs! There are now hundreds of your brother sportsmen who would accept an un- injured peregrine as avery handsome present. Your 16 FALCONRY. object cannot be revenge on a dumb creature—I am sure it is not cruelty: let me ask whether it cannot be changed altogether, and turned into a kindness. Or, look at the matter in another light :—was not this bird evidently intended for the service of man? Is not the fact that it ¢s trained to be his servant, easily and effectively, some evidence? Point out any other “vermin ”—to use your own expression — with such a “claim” as this! The admission of all time is, that an animal trained to field sports—I don’t speak of an individual, but of a race—ceases to be ver- min. Again :—You encourage the fox in your own woods and in the coverts of your neighbours ; you pro- scribe, as heartless, and worthless, and vulgar, any who dare to destroy him save in one way, which some of you have made orthodox. For his food you provide rabbits—which (in order that, satiated with these, he may not seek a more dainty dish) you preserve, possibly to the injury of some of your tenants. He does, however, seek this more dainty dish after all: you know he takes your pheasants—your sitting pheasants—and those of your neighbours: he is the most cunning, treacherous, destructive running ver- min that infests these kingdoms. Well—you pre- serve him; you kill him, it is true—but you love him in life and in death. You do well; and if the pen of “ Peregrine” were worth the weight of its own feather in your estimation, or if I thought it were, I would tell you that I believe there is not a single ITS CLAIMS. 17 argument set up against fox-hunting, nor a single injury that the preservation of foxes produces, which are not outweighed or compensated for a hundred times by the impress which that brave sport leaves on our national character. I grant—I assert—this with all my heart. Far distant be that bad, ill- starred day for England, when all shall be left to figures and the plodding brain; when nothing shall be left to the strong right hand — nothing to the heart ; when the nerve shall be no more strung, the intellect no more braced, by the practice of daring courage—by the many incidents of “ flood and field” which challenge the judgment, which compel rapid decision, which teach men, in the very glory and “school of their sport, how they shall deport them- selves, when there is something more glorious in- deed, but no more tuition, and no more play! Falconry, unlike fox-hunting, is not a national sport here at this time; but it was a national sport, as I have already reminded you, when those lived who have sent you down, through generations, your horses and hounds. The peregrine is part and parcel of a sport practised by your fathers,—and now sought to be revived by some of their children. Without it the play has no Hamlet. But your keepers, who rightly preserve the fox of a well-established sport, which is more than powerful enough to shift for itself, have your orders to search out and destroy the creature which, par excellence, is necessary to the ¢ a 18 FALCONRY. revival and spread of falconry. I only ask for the gal- lantry and self-denial which one body of sportsmen are ever wont to show another. . Notwithstanding the very considerable devastation which follows the existence of the fox, the loss of game through him is accounted as nothing, because the result more than justifies it. I know what would more than justify the moderate (only moderate) preservation of the peregrine falcon. I know what would justify the toleration (if you will) of these “ flying vermin ” — the pleasure of pleasing others who love the chase as well as you do; the satisfaction of giving a helping hand to a cause which needs help; the pride of restoring to its place and position in this country a sport so thoroughly national; the knowledge one day may be even amongst yourselves——who have already in such entire subjection the “beasts of the field ”— how glorious a thing it is also to have “ dominion over the fowls of the air.” ; ITS HISTORY. 19 CHAP. II. ITS HISTORY. OF course this chapter lays me open to a charge of plagiarism. I may regret the inconvenience, but cannot avoid it. Nay, I have a great mind to turn testy, and ask how people dared to anticipate me in attempting to collect and arrange materials for an account of the progress of falconry. I would rather have done it myself. Still I beg to say that I have added some new chattels to the store; perhaps that circumstance may help me with the critics. In writing such a history as that contained in the present chapter — or indeed, perhaps, in writing any history at all—a man must derive most of his infor- mation from books of some sort. I cannot possibly tell what was done a matter of 3000 years ago, unless I read up the subject ; for it can scarcely be supposed, even by the most virulent critic, that I was there and saw it. “True,” it is said, “but you must read it up in a particular way; it will never do for you to look into some modern author, and simply reproduce all that he has accumulated by painful and diligent c2 20 FALCONRY. labour: that will be unscrupulous and foolish in the last degree.” Tallow this; but it is rather hard, too, in my peculiar case. For of all the subjects I have had to “ get up” for any purpose, I think the “ His- tory of Falconry” is the most tiresome. Let me explain — I look into every likely and ancient work I can lay my hand on; I write to some of the best scholars of the day, some strangers, some my inti- mate friends; I amass what I humbly conceive to be a very respectable amount of information; I begin to turn it about a little, and put it into shape, when lo! I discover that some learned but in- fatuated individual has beaten most of the ground before me, and that if I produce my treasure at all, all the world will declare I stole it. This is distress- ing and discouraging. It is what one ought to ex- pect, perhaps, in such a clever world. I had to do my work, and have done it — badly, but not without labour. I have done my best. It is, of course, impossible to give anything like a positive date to the invention of the art of falconry —I mean to its rise in the world; but still some little investigation of its antiquity may not be un- interesting. An important reference is made, in ‘Falconry in the British Isles,” to the second volume of Mr. Layard’s “ Nineveh:” that gentleman, it seems, found in the ruins of Khorsabad a bas-relief, “ in which there appeared to be a falconer bearing a hawk on his wrist ;” and the judicious comment upon this ITS HISTORY. ar is that, “although the hand of time had weighed heavily upon this record of the past, in all probability so accurate an observer was not mistaken in his sur- mise.” I quite think that the great probability lies with the correctness of Mr. Layard’s notion; it would be presumption indeed, especially for one who has not seen the relic, to say anything less; but it may be worth while to remind my readers how frequently, as Mr. Layard has shown us, the hawk’s head occurs in Assyrian sculpture. He quotes a fragment of the Zoroastrian oracles, preserved by Eusebius, in which it is said “ God is he that hath the head of a hawk;” and it is now more than conjectured—asserted, in- deed, upon almost certain evidence—that Nisroch, worshipping before whom Sennacherib was killed by his sons, was an eagle-headed idol. “ Thus,” says Mr. Vaux (Assistant in the Department of Antiquities, British Museum), “in Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic, the word nisr means either an eagle or a hawk, and appears to be derived from an unused root, meaning ‘ to tear in pieces with the teeth.’” Again, “in the earliest sculptures from Nimroud, the king only is seen in adoration before one symbol of the deity” (not Nisroch this time), “ the figure with the wings and tail of a bird,” &. Such seem to have been very frequent. In fact, it is not, per- haps, a very great exaggeration to say of Assyrian sculpture, that it was half made up of wings, with a very fair sprinkling of hawks’ or eagles’ heads, c3 22 FALCONRY. Figures also have been found, not only bearing the fir-cone and basket, &c., but also (in the hand) living animals, such as the fallow deer or the gazelle. I run through these matters only to show that, unless the bas-relief has a tolerable distinctness, we must not assert absolutely that it represents the figure of a falconer. The immense weight of Mr. Layard’s opinion, however, should make our conviction little short of certainty; and I must say, at any rate, that the matter is of very great importance to a writer struggling to make out the earliest history of fal- conry, and to a reader concerned and interested in his progress. For, if this bas-relief be really what it is thought to be, twenty-five centuries must have passed away since the art first took its rise, while the fair inference remains that it flourished 3000 years ago, among a nation of princes, palaces, and temples ——a nation perhaps at once the mightiest and most luxurious which the world ever saw. Articles on the history of falconry, as well as those on many subjects of antiquity, often give a seemingly imposing list of authorities, whilst they contain few dates, and scarcely any valuable minutiew. Would many people object to own that they know little or nothing about Ctesias? He might have been a sol- dier, priest, or statesman ; perhaps a philosopher or a fool. At any rate they would, most ‘likely, give up his date altogether. And yet I find him men- tioned (as a witness to the antiquity of falconry) in a IfS HISTORY. 23 quotation in Blaine’s article—-as well as in the eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica — without the faintest reference to the century in which he was born, the country which claimed him as her son, or the class to which he belonged. His testz- mony is, that “ foxes and hares were hunted in India by means of rapacious birds.” What it is worth may be gathered from the following account of him (enough of which may be seen by a glance at Lem- priére):— He was a Greek historian, seems to have dabbled in medicine, and was descended, in some way or other, from Aisculapius himself, date, B.c. 401. He wrote on Assyria, Persia, India; but I regret, for our sakes as well as for his own, that he did not adhere very strictly to the truth in his Indian history ; indeed, that production has been said to be “full of fables.” Cuvier, however, apologises for him, and declares that the fantastic animals of which he speaks were not imagined by him, but he fell into the mistake of ascribing an actual existence to hiero- graphic figures, &e. &c. This innocent, perhaps, but not very trifling “ mistake ” induces a sort of shyness on our part, at which his shade ought not to be sur- prised ; and, although I think his testimony in the present matter well worth having, I cannot positively press it upon my readers. Aristotle (born B.c. 384) is, of course, a well-known worthy. He was born at Stagira, was a pupil of Plato, and private tutor to Alexander the Great, who c4 24 FALCONRY. seems in after years to have been very kind to him, and to have made him a present of rather more birds and beasts than would stock the Regent’s-park gar- dens. We may rely, I think, both on Aristotle’s veracity and acquirements. He was such a clever lad at school, that Plato had a knack of saying in his absence—may-be, when he played truant—“ In- tellect is not here;” a remark, by the way, which, as an expression of honest conviction, was no doubt creditable to the elder philosopher, but not flattering to the other students. However, it is a great pity that so small a portion only of Aristotle’s fifty vo- lumes “on the history of animated nature” are extant; for it is difficult to suppose any ancient tes- timony to our subject more valuable than his. We know that he does say, however, “ When the hawks seized a bird they dropped it among the hunters.” This quotation will be found in Blaine’s article. I confess I have not yet had the opportunity of veri- fying it; but there is no reason to doubt its correct- ness. Again, we find in a work ascribed to Aristotle, and evidently written about his time, something like this expression: “ Hawks appear when called.” Let us consider, then, for an instant to what point we have arrived, I think it may be fairly said that the great sport existed, at least in Asia, several cen- turies before the Christian era. The philosopher, the historian, the bas-relief, have each their separate testimony, strong, though perhaps not certain when ITS HISTORY. 25 it stands alone; but their cumulative evidence appears to me irresistible; and I might, without-much diffi- culty, give it even further support. We shall take up the next link of our chain in the first century ; and I only wish that something could be clearly made out as to the practice of falconry by the Romans at this period. The late lamented Pro- fessor Blunt, with a courtesy which is not always the companion of great learning, took the trouble to write a letter to me on the antiquity of falconry, reminding me, amongst other things, of a passage in Pliny (lib. x. c, 8), which, however, as he hinted, is gene- rally known, to the effect that in a particular part of Thrace men and hawks prey together,—the men “beating the woods, the hawks pouncing on the birds they disturbed. This testimony, even if it can be relied upon at all, as proving the existence of the art of falconry, and the use of trained hawks (which I doubt), is valuable in our present immediate consi- deration, rather, as fixing a period than directing us to the customs of a people. Indeed, it is an uncer- tain witness altogether; and the Professor, in his letter to me, speaks of it only as showing an “ ap- proach” to the art. He goes on to say, that “it is impossible to believe that the art itself was then known, and yet Pliny not take notice of it on this occasion.” All this, then, is unsatisfactory ; but I once thought we might collect a ray or two of light from the epi- 26. FALCONRY. grammatic poet Martial, born .p. 40., about thirty years later than the Pliny of whom we have spoken. I borrow the following lines of his, which have already been quoted in an Essay on our subject :— “Preedo fuit volucrum, famulus nunc ancupis idem, Decipit, et captas non sibi meeret aves:” and which I take the liberty of translating thus: — “Once a plunderer of birds, now the servant of a bird-catcher, he snares birds, and grieves that they are not caught for his own benefit.” Decipit, however, looks sadly like decoying birds; and my coadjutor has suggested, correctly I am convinced, that the little owl (stria passerina of Linnzus) is here in- tended. It has been for ages used on the continent to lure up small birds for the nets, &c. We are told that the ancient Britons had a taste for hawking; but of course no proof is given of this assertion. “The short Roman sword,” however, of which they decidedly had a taste, must have turned their attention to other matters; but, if it could be proved that they practised the sport before the Roman conquest, we might suspect that their masters learned it from them. That trained hawks were flown in Britain before the Heptarchy is very clear. I copy the following from Turner's “ History of the Anglo-Saxons,” vol. iii. c. vil. p. 65; and just remark, by way of introduc- tion, that this was the time of the famous King Pepin ITS HISTORY. 27 of France, whom indeed Boniface crowned; and therefore Ethelbert, who is probably the “ King of Kent” alluded to, must not be confounded with the Ethelbert of ‘860, king after the union of the Hep- tarchy, and with whom we are more familiar :— “Hawks and falcons were also favourite subjects of amusement, and valuable presents in those days, when, the country being much overrun with wood, every species of the feathered race abounded in all parts. A king of Kent begged of a friend abroad two falcons, of such skill and courage as to attack cranes willingly, and seizing them to throw them on the ground. He says he makes this request, because there were few hawks of that kind in Kent who pro- duced good offspring, and who could be made agile and courageous enough in this art of warfare. Our Boniface sent, among some other presents, a hawk and two falcons to a friend; and we may infer the common use of the diversion from his forbidding his monks to hunt in the woods with dogs, and from having hawks and falcons.” And then, speaking of a somewhat later period, he says: “An Anglo-Saxon by his will gives two hawks and all his staghounds to his natural lord. The sportsmen in the train of the great were so onerous on lands as to make the exemption of their visit a valuable privilege. Hence a king liberates some lands from those who carry with them hawks or falcons, horses or dogs. The Saxon Calendar, in its drawings, represents hawking 28 FALCONRY. in the month of October. Hunting and hawking were for many years favourite diversions in this island. In the tapestry of Bayeux, Harold appears with his hawk upon his hand.” Passing for a moment from England to the conti- nent of Europe, we may gather something from Spelman’s “ Glossarium Archxologicum ”—a work written in Latin, with occasional English equivalents. He (writing in 1629) says, “ that the art was invented more than a thousand years before,” and quotes “ Lex Salica,” tit. 7. § 1: © Qui acceptorem de arbore furaverint,” &e., ¢. e. from the nest, or (more pro- perly perhaps), as we say in English, @ brancher. Ibid. § 2: “Acceptorem de pertica,” 4. e. a hawk of the perch. § 3: “ Acceptorem intra clavem repositum,” probably a hawk in the mew. In Leg. Ripuarior., tit. 36. § 11: “ Acceptorem domitum,” a reclaimed hawk ; «© Acceptorem mutetum,” a mewed hawk. In Leg. Frisonum: “Qui -canem acceptoricium occi- derit,” &e., a spaniel (or a dog used for assisting the hawks). A still greater antiquity seems to be indi- cated by a statement in the “ Notitia dignitatum Imperii Occidentalis,” that a rank of soldiers, called Sagittarii Venatores, carried on their shield the re- presentation of a hawk. Tt may be asked, however, who some of these people were—the Riparii and the Frisians for in- stance —and when they lived. In a note of Gibbon to chapter xxxv. of his History, he says: “The ITS HISTORY. 29 Riparii, or Ripuarii, derived their name from their posts on the three rivers, the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle ;” and in chap. xxxviii, he seems to give the period between Clovis and Dagobert’s reign over France, 2.¢. about 480—620, as the period. in which the Ripuarian code was “ transcribed and pub- lished.” I do not know when it was drawn up ; but we have seen enough of it to be sure that falconry was known on the Continent at a very early date, and probably before it was much practised in England. As for the Frisians, they dwelt along the coast of north-western Germany, from the Scheldt to the Elbe, in the fourth and fifth centuries, and their laws must have been written somewhere about this time. The “ Notitia dignitatum Imperii Occidentalis” is a mere summary statement of the names of the different officers, magistrates, &c., in the Western Empire.” Its date is somewhere about A.p. 400, but is not pre- cisely known. I do not think, however, that any great weight can be given to Spelman’s inference from the name and bearings of the soldiers whom the “ Notitia” calls “ Sagittarii Venatores.” We may gather from all this that falconry was tolerably well established as a leading sport in Europe, and possibly in these islands, at a very early period of our own history,—between the fourth and sixth centuries perhaps; England probably, however, being later than Germany in adopting it. I have now simply to point to its rapid increase among all 30 FALCONRY. civilised nations—a fact fortunately so well known, that the hard necessity no longer remains of bringing the reader to book, and insisting upon his. close at- tention to various uncouth names and early dates, as proofs of the general correctness of my statements. It increased gradually from the Conquest, — esta- blished, as we have seen, long before it; but Edward III. is perhaps peculiarly conspicuous for having made stringent laws on the subject of falconry. The love of this sport had now become a perfect passion—nay, a mania. Europe was inflamed with it. Monarchs, nobles, and knights, disdaining the moderate draughts of its pleasures, drained them to intoxication, and lived for them, as for their fame. If a gallant were in prison he would carve falcons upon the walls; ifina court or in achurch he would bear them on his glove; if in the grave, they would be figured on his tomb- stone; nay, his bride took a merlin to the altar on her wedding-day, and conversed with her lord in terms which became positively figurative, as she pointed every other sentiment, and hope, and (who knows?) command, with an allusion to some favou- rite twist of the head, or movement of the wing, or stretching out of the foot, proper to the birds which she had caressed twenty times daily since she was tall enough to reach their perches. Not to love hawking was a proof of the grossest vulgarity of dis- position, and of many drops of churlish blood. In- deed, so exclusive were the well-born in this matter ITS HISTORY. 31 that, as is commonly known, particular hawks conld be carried only by persons of particular ranks or con- ditions, or not below them, to which those birds were allotted—as, for example, the peregrine to an earl, &c. &e. These permissions and prohibitions passed away not very long before hawking itself was fast losing ground—though even as early as King John’s time. some modification was made in them. The sport was still in its palmy days after the Tudors’ accession, Elizabeth herself patronising it. James Stuart, however, did not care for it, though his mother loved it dearly, and flew hawks while she was a prisoner. Towards the middle* of the seventeenth century the sport seems to have languished, probably abroad, but certainly in England. It could scarcely have flourished under the shadow of the “ Protector.” Towards the latter half of the eighteenth century there was a partial revival. It took more than a hundred years to raise into health even the sport of chivalry after the eleven years’ infliction. Sixty years ago, or more, Lord Orford and Colonel Thornton did their * Considerably later than this, about 1730, lived William M‘Ar- thur, gardener and falconer to the Duke of Perth. He, with his master, joined the standard of Prince Charles Edward, and fought at Preston Pans, Falkirk, and Culloden. In the last of these battles he was wounded in the shoulder; but a disguise and the hills saved him, as they did many others. He ultimately became gardener at Danby in Wensleydale, and died there in 1808, at the great age of 92,. This note is valuable, as it helps to supply the most doubtful link in our chain. 32 FALCONRY. ¢ best to revive falconry in England, and succeeded in a measure. They flew “passage hawks,” after the Dutch fashion ; but this part of their system does not seem to have reached Scotland, where “ eyesses” have almost always been used. They used eyesses also. But when, more recently, fowling-pieces were brought nearly to perfection, and the art of shooting flying became thoroughly understood, falconry received another blow. Sportsmen, I suppose, persuaded themselves that the end or aim of field sports is simply and only to kill game, and that no instrument is so much to be admired as that by which the greatest bag can be made in the shortest time. Hence the gun soon took the place of the hawk. Had they thought twice upon the matter, it would have oc- curred to them that fresh air, exercise, pleasurable and therefore healthy excitement, are of infinitely more importance than any amount of destruction; and falconry might, in that case, have gone hand in hand with the great and honoured sport of shooting. The present inclosed state of this country is, of course, inimical to the general spread of falconry; but I beg most courteously to inform the Rev. J. G. Wood, author of “ My Feathered Friends,” and other interesting works, that his assertion that « falconry in this country is just an impossibility,” is being more strongly contradicted, and that practically, every day. There is a lingering vitality about the sport which, considering the many obstacles to its revival, IFS HISTORY. 33 appears to me wonderful. No dethroned queen—not Margaret of Anjou herself—ever, surely, strove with more determination to assert her rights, or to regain a lost inheritance. That falconry will always exist in the world—for its stronghold is still the east—I firmly believe; but I, hoping against hope perhaps, still look for the time when the sportsmen of these islands shall write, not with their pens but in their practice, another page of its history. At least, there is no violent improbability. We change the fashion of our sports almost as rapidly as that of our dress. I don’t know whether we shall ever return to the long waistcoats and the powdered hair; but I am sure that a reaction of feeling has commenced, which is in favour of the leash and the hood. 34 FALCONRY. CHAP. III. LITTLE GENERALLY KNOWN ABOUT HAWKS.—THE “BLUE” HAWKE. — PETER BELL. — LONG-WINGED AND SHORT-WINGED HAWKS.— HARD NAMES NOT MUCH AFFECTED BY MODERN FALCONERS, — TERMS USED IN FALCONRY. — THE YOUNG FALCONER TO BEGIN WITH FEW HAWKS.— ONE TIERCEL,— AN ONLY HAWK. — AN ONLY PARROT WHICH “TALKS LIKE A CHRISTIAN.”— AN OUT- OF-DOORS COMPANION. — A BRACE OF PARTRIDGES. — “ LITTLE MEETS.” — HAWKING CLUBS, Vury little is known about hawks by the generality of sportsmen ; and not very much, I think, even by those among them who profess some passable know- ledge of natural history. The thorough-going na- turalist, of course, is a different man from these. He making it his business to inform himself of all animated nature’s secrets, and probably placing the Accipitres at the head of his ornithological studies, arrives—after reading and personal observation — at sound and just conclusions respecting the history and habits of birds of prey. The falconer, too, if only from sheer rrecessity, possesses an intimate acquaint- ance with birds which he has examined in the nest, or observed close round it— which he has seen, as wild savage things, dashing after their dinner with THE “ BLUE” HAWK. 35 even more than American haste and anxiety for that meal; whose nature he has made subservient —and whose singular alteration of plumage after the first moult (that stumbling-block to some ornithologists) he has noted, in its every stage, for hours, that would make up a sum of months or years, at the distance of his own eyes from his gloved hand. Accomplished naturalists, and falconers of any kind, are, however, unfortunately few and far between. I think gamekeepers generally “know a hawk from a hernshaw;” but it is the exception, and not the rule, if they know a sparrow-hawk from a kestrel. Perhaps this is scarcely to be wondered at; for, with a few exceptions, they are plain hard-working men, well adapted to their station, and with too much on their hands to be able to spare a great deal for their minds. Still, however, a little more information and discrimination on the subject of “vermin” might be useful to them. As it is, I find that, in describing hawks, their favourite colour is blwe; beyond this they commonly make no distinction, save perhaps that of size. ‘Oh yes, sir, I know which you mean. It is the blue hawk.” How many gamekeepers have indulged me with this scientific definition, which seems indeed to be a pet and patent phrase with the fraternity, I forget— but they have not been few. As one might, without doing very great violence to the general idea of colour, consider as “blue” the adult males of the peregrine, merlin, hen-harrier, D2 36 FALCONRY. hobby and sparrow-hawk, &c., I have not always obtained any great amount of information in the con- versations referred to. Mr. Peter Bell, the potter, was not an amiable individual; neither was he intellectual ; neither was he, as Wordsworth expressly informs us, a very close or enthusiastic observer of Nature, though she, for her part, seems-to have taken some pains about him :— “In vain through every changeful year Did Nature lead him as before ; A primrose by a river’s brim A. yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.” I have no doubt that, before the discovery of the donkey and her poor drowned master, he was a very stupid fellow indeed; but, respecting the matter of the “yellow primrose,” I really do not see that he was much worse than his neighbours. However, we will try to make our ornithological information goa little further than his botanical, and prove, at any rate, that a “blue” hawk is known to us by some- thing more certain and definite than its colour. In order that we may take the first step in the direction of this desirable end, I will just remind my readers that hawks are divided into two great classes— viz. the long-winged and short-winged hawks. The long- winged are called falcons, the short-winged simply hawks (but the female goshawk seems to be allowed LONG-WINGED AND SHORT-WINGED HAWKS. 37 by courtesy to assume the more noble title). Thus the hobby, for example, is really a true falcon, though she is not generally spoken of by that name. It be- longs, in general parlance perhaps, par excellence to the peregrine—shared with her by the larger birds, shortly known as “ Jer-falcons,” and also by the Barbary falcon. Indeed, we may paraphrase rather freely the old distinction drawn between the mare and horse by saying that, whilst every falcon is a hawk, every hawk is not a falcon. The only short-winged hawks used by falconers (at any rate in Europe) are the goshawk, and the spar- row-hawk—both the male and female of the former —the female only in these islands, as a general rule, of the latter. These birds are termed “ hawks of the fist,” because they fly from it at their quarry, not stooping from a height, as the falcons do, and as they are trained to expect food from the hand, to which they should come readily —an arrangement some- times departed from, perhaps, in favour of an eaxtem- pore lure, as occasion may serve, but of considerable use, as I shall hereafter point out. Long-winged hawks are called “hawks of the lure,” because they are taught to fly to it when necessary. It is a simple instrument, and will be explained in the proper place. In temper and disposition, as well as in power of flight, the falcons have an immense advantage over their less noble kinsmen. I need scarcely say, there- D3 38 FALCONRY. fore, that they are trained with much greater ease, and are flown with more pleasure, and generally with more effect, than the short-winged hawks., The fol- lowing concise notice of the “ three never-failing characteristics ” by which falcons are distinguished from the true hawks is from “ Falconry in the British Isles :” — “ By the tooth on the upper mandible (this in some of the foreign species is doubled); by the second feather of the wing being either the longest or equal in length to the third; and by the nature of the stoop made in pursuit of their prey.”"* The peculiar size, colour, plumage, and disposition of each hawk will be given in the chapter or passage appro- priated to it. In olden times the terms used in falconry were very numerous, and there seems to have been a kind of freemasonry in the matter—a part, probably, of the exclusiveness which was claimed for the sport. Mystery is now, of course, entirely done away with, and the art open to all who think it worth their while to learn it. Indeed, we do not affect very many hard names; and I should be almost as likely to speak toa man about the petty-single of his falcon, as I should to ask him, supposing he had hurt his knee, how his patella was on any given morning. Nevertheless, there are some terms which it is desir- able to learn, and which I will set down here. I may * Some further remarks on this head will be found in Chap. XV. TERMS USED IN FALCONRY. 39 mention one or two not generally employed, but shall not omit any without the knowledge of which the young falconer would be considered ignorant. But, even in looking through these, he may remem- ber that they can, in ordinary conversation, be occa- sionally exchanged for simple names. For instance, he may venture to call a hawk’s tail its tail, and need not invariably task himself with the more craft-like expression train, when he wishes to signify a refer- ence to that useful appendage. These are days, Sir Falconer, of very singular enlightenment; and a wise man will certainly be set down as a fool if he does not make his best bow to the nineteenth century. In this instance let him make it. The following is a list of terms used in hawking, together with their explanations, which will, of course, be found in most books upon the subject, though I have taken chiefly as my guide in selecting them “Falconry in the British Isles:” Arms. The legs of a hawk from'the thigh to the foot. Bate. To struggle from the fist, block, or perch, either through fright, or for liberty, &e. Beam-feathers. The long feathers of the wings of hawks. Bewits. Strips of leather by which the bells are fastened to the legs. Bind. To cling to the quarry in the air. D4 40 FALCONRY. Block. The conical piece of wood to which falcons are fastened when at rest, and on which they sit. Brail. A thong of leather for securing the wings of hawks, to prevent them bating, Brancher. A young hawk that has lately left the nest, thus distinguished from an eyess— one taken before it can fly. Cadge. The frame on which several hawks are placed when they are carried to the field. In former days they were exposed for sale on the cadge. Hence, perhaps, the use of the slang term “cadger” for a person always asking favours. Cadger; in hawking language, is the man who carries the cadge. Calling off. Luring a hawk, from an assistant at a distance, for exercise. Carry. A hawk is said to “carry” when it moves away with the captured quarry. This is done by some hawks on the near approach of the falconer, but is not always a proof of the bird being wild. A hawk: that has no fear whatever of its master may yet dread the loss of its prize just taken. Such birds, generally speaking, have been badly trained, though some possess such a disposition for the fault that with them the best falconers have been unable entirely to pre- vent it. To correct it in any hawk is very difficult. Cast, is a pair of hawks. Castings. Fur, feathers, &c., given to the hawk with its food. They are afterwards ejected from the TERMS USED IN FALCONRY. 41 mouth, in somewhat of an egg-shape, and cleanse the gorge. Cere. The waz-like skin above the beak. Check. To fly at; to change the bird in pursuit. Clutching. Taking the quarry in the feet, instead of striking it down. Come-to. To begin obeying the falconer. Coping. Shortening the bill and talons of a hawk. Crabbing. Hawks fighting with one another. Creance. A long string to which hawks (generally haggards) are fastened during their first lessons. A live pigeon is sometimes thrown up in a creance on occasions which will be mentioned. Crimes (or erinets). Hairs, or hair-like feathers, about the cere. Deck-feathers. The two centre feathers of the tail. Disclosed, is when the young just peep through the shell. Endew, is when the hawk digests her food. Enter. To fly the hawk at quarry (or a particular quarry) for the first time. Enseame. An old term, signifying to purge a hawk. Eyess. A nestling hawk. Lyrie. The breeding place. Feaking, is when the hawk wipes her beak after feeding —a custom scarcely ever omitted. ‘Flags. The feathers next the “principals” in a hawk’s wing. 42 FALCONRY. Frownce. A disease in the mouth and throat of a hawk. eee Get in. To¢rasten to the hawk after it has killed. Gorge. The crop, craw, or first stomach. Hack. (I am not sure at present of the derivation of this word) Once used to describe “the place where the hawk’s meat is laid.” Hack is the state of liberty in which hawks taken from the nest are kept for some weeks after they can fly. Older birds are occasionally flown at hack, and sometimes weighted to prevent them preying for themselves. A term constantly in the mouths of falconers. Haggard. A wild-caught mature hawk. Hood. The cap used for blindfolding or “ hood- winking” hawks. Imp. To mend a broken feather. Inke. The neck, from the head to the body of the quarry. Intermewed. A hawk moulted in confinement isso called. Jack, The male merlin. Jerkin. The male of jer-falcons, Jesses. The leathern straps fastened to the legs of a hawk, and which are not removed when the bird flies. Leash, The leather thong fastened by a swivel to the jesses, when the hawk is confined to block or fist, &c. : Mail, or Mailes. The breast-feathers of a hawk. TERMS USED IN FALCONRY. 43 Make-Hawks. Old staunch hawks, sometimes em- ployed in teaching young ones. Manning a hawk. Making him endure the com- pany of strangers. Mew. To moult: also the place in which hawks are kept. Musket. The male sparrow-hawk. Mutes. The droppings of a hawk; and also (anciently) of a heron. Nares. The nostrils of a hawk. Pannel. The lower bowel of a hawk. Passage. The flight of herons to and from the heronry during the breeding season. Passage Hawks. Another term for haggards and red hawks, taken as they migrate. Pelt. The dead body of the quarry. Perch, The resting-place for short-winged hawks. Petty-single. The small toe of a hawk. Pitch, The extreme height to which a long-winged hawk rises before the game is sprung. ’ Plumage. Feathers given the hawk for a cast. Point. The way in which a hawk rises (and thus “makes its point”) over the exact spot where the quarry has taken refuge, 7. e. been “ put in.” Pounces. The claws of a hawk. Principal feathers, or Principals. The two longest feathers in a hawk’s wing, Prunes, is when a hawk arranges its feathers, or plumes itself. i.e. the long oper 44 FALCONRY. Pull through the hood. To eat through it. Put over. A sort of squeezing the food from the gorge to the stomach, ‘a process which hawks fre- quently go through after a full meal, moving their necks in a strange manner. Put im, is when the quarry is driven into cover. Quarry. The game flown at. Rake. To fly too wide. . Raking. Striking the game in the air. Ramage. Said of a wild hawk. Rangle. Small stones formerly given to hawks. The custom is obsolete; but it is as well to have such stones within reach of peregrines, as it has been re- cently proved that they occasionally eat them. Reclaim. To tame a hawk, and make him familiar. Red hawk. A peregrine of the first year. Ring. To rise spirally—said of either long-winged hawk or quarry. Robin. The male hobby. Rufter-hood. An easy: fitting hood, through which the hawk can eat, capable, however, of being well secured, used in training haggards, &e. Ruff. To strike the game. without « trussing ” or seizing it. Sails. The wings of a hawk. Seeling. Running a thread through the eyelids of a newly-caught hawk, to obscure the sight for a time —a cruel practice, now quite obsolete in this country. TERMS USED IN FALCONRY. 45 Serving « hawk. Helping to put out the quarry from cover when it has been “ put in,” &c. Sharp set. Very hungry. Sniting, “is when a hawk, as it were, sneezeth.” I insert this old term in joke rather than earnest, though it is perfectly orthodox. It may serve to show how the most trifling motion of a hawk was once noticed, and named. I am not quite sure, how- ever, whether it is not used even now among the poor in some counties for the act of sneezing. Soar Hawk. Any hawk of the first year. Standing. Remaining in idleness at the block, &c. Stoop, sometimes swoop (“At one fell swoop.”— Macbeth). The rapid descent of a falcon from a height on the flying quarry. Summed. Said of a hawk when the plumage is full grown. Swivel. Used to prevent jesses and leash becoming twisted. “ Take the air.” To soar aloft; said of the quarry. Much the same as to “ring.” Tiercel (Tassel Romeo and Juliet, &c.). Male of the peregrine or goshawk ; probably because these are a third smaller than the falcons. . Tiring. Any bony or tough bit (such as the leg of a fowl, with most of the flesh gone) at which hawks, when being trained, may pull, so that the meal is prolonged, &e. 46 FALCONRY. Train. The tail of a hawk. Also, a live bird given to hawks for the purpose of “ entering.” Truss. To clutch the quarry in the air. Varvels. Little rings of silver, at.the ends of the jesses, on which the owner’s name is engraved. Not in present use in this country. Wait on. A hawk is said to “wait on” when it soars in circles above the head of the falconer, or over a dog which is pointing game. It is thus pre- pared to stoop at the quarry when sprung, or to descend on the lure, as the case may be. Yarak. An eastern term, signifying the happy time when short-winged hawks are in a good humour, and “ ready to fly eagerly at a quarry. T am specially thankful that this list is concluded 5 and if the reader has been bored with it, so have I— excessively. His revenge may be in that consideration. A few more words, and this chapter must be sent after its two elder brothers, and room: made for the peregrine. This is perhaps the proper place to warn those who may intend to commence the practice of fal- conry next summer, that they should by no means begin with many hawks. If they choose to make their first essay with merlins, let them procure three at most, two of which may be hen birds. But if the peregrine be used by a novice, a cast is the utmost, and one is the best. I unhesitatingly recommend TO BEGIN WITH FEW HAWKS. 47 but one in the case of a man who feels sure that the bird is safe from powder and traps within a circle of from six to eight miles. And after all, if he do lose that one, he may be able to purchase another, and so not be utterly hawkless. Let this bird be a tiercel. It will soon take partridges beautifully, and may be flown even in a country that is moderately inclosed ; though of course the most open patches should be selected. An only hawk, unlike an only child, is seldom spoilt by notice. The master of such a bird will carry and fly him often; bring him, perhaps, frequently into the company of strangers; and, really with nothing that can be called trouble, make him as docile as a dog. I should like to see that man next year, supposing he take my advice—advice which, I may observe, is not mine only, but that of one of the greatest falconers of theday. I should like to see that man, I repeat, next year; he will have a cast and a half of peregrines, I warrant him ; ay! and they will be good ones, and well-managed too. But I have not quite done with this one bird yet. Speak! Who has an only parrot, an only cockatoo, an only monkey, or what you will? My dear sir, why have you these? Why a parrot, for instance? Because you choose to have it. Truly. And because, besides, as the old women say, it talks like a Christian. Well put; though with respect to Christianity, if it spent much of its valuable time on deck in its passage to you, I rather fear it may not 48 FALCONRY. be quite so conspicuous a character in that way as report would seem to imply. Now, I wish to put it to you feelingly, whether you would not prefer to this parrot a right true honest British bird, hand- somer, I think, than the gaudy foreigner (though tastes differ), and which will be your companion out of doors. He will astonish your friends, if that be any object, twenty times more than the parrot did when he asked the company in general to give him some more gravy. He will come through the air to you as you raise your voice or hand. He will delight you and others with the grace of his motion, the rapidity of his wing, and the wonderful courage which belongs, almost pre-eminently, to his species. And if you will forgive me, my dear reader, whom I am addressing all this time, for a terrible anti- climax, I will just hint that an excellent brace of partridges, though done to a turn by your unexcep- tionable cook, would have an additional zest in the recollection of the bright hour you and that tiercel spent together in the great field which is wheat- stubble this year. T have often thought that two or three neighbours, each possessing a good tiercel*, might have capital sport at little “meets,” which they might plan * A “good” tiercel—The price of a good (the best) trained pere- grine ought not to be morethan 5. 5s, Dealers should remember the risk from powder and shot, &c. When the sport is well known, and trained hawks are consequently safer, perhaps a somewhat higher price might be asked for a first-rate bird. LITTLE “ MEETS.” 49 among themselves. Each hawk would fly twice or three times; and six or eight flights would be a pretty morning’s work. On a fine dry September day you may persuade ladies into stubble, even when they are not mounted, as I know by having tried the experiment. In short, this notion of hawking clubs, in a small way (which might develope into an extensive subscription affair or not, just as happened to be thought best), appears to me, though I say it, a very respectable one indeed.* * Since this was written a Hawking Club has actually been esta- blished, under the able management of C. E. Holford, Esq., Round House, Ware. 50 FALCONRY. CHAP. IV. TIE PEREGRINE FALCON (F4LCO PEREGRINUS). — NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BIRD. — MODE OF TAKING THE NEST.— REARING OF EYESSES,— BELLS AND JESSES.— THE LURE.— FALCONERS’ CRIES. —“ CARRYING” PREVENTED.— FLYING AT HACK.—TAKING UP THE HAWES. — GLOVE. — HOODS. — SWIVELS. — LEASH. — BLOCK. Falco Peregrinus is the only name given by modern science to this bird, which seems at last to have escaped from a whole string of synonymes with which different men, and different languages, had over- weighted it. Haggard, falcon-genteel, pilgrim or peregrine falcon, red falcon, &c., were names given to signify different species indeed, but such as existed only in the imagination of the nomenclators. The older naturalists called almost every bird of prey “falco;” it was enough for them that the word means “to cut with a bill or hook.” I need scarcely say that the indiscriminate use of the term is now discontinued. Linnzus includes twenty-six species under the generic appellation of “ falcon.” This was, of course, simply the carrying out of his system. But for my own part, I half suspect that the old falconers were not very clear in the natural history of the peregrine.* They lay themselves open * The old falconers certainly seem to be guilty of blunder in this Ss va ud hee seat 5. \eaea ved os ‘ae rv ASHES *yo.tad £0 3907q 91/9 09 SyNBI, WOWS WANG dn usr “sd1} 10 sadUvtq 8,pooy OUT, ‘2 “UBATS Suuajysvy Joy pasn ssesye 0} Apvar paytesur ajpaeu “pooy ¥ ‘9 | st A[UO auO Jo TySUaT sjoyAL ST YOGA “our s,ouooTey OL “IT | Surdur ayy yeas ‘eouyvay VW ‘6 “JOALMS ayy Yysnouy ‘sassaf ou, “sg “s *S_ *ssud qraiaq of} JO spua att} *qno Sut 94} Ysnory} Surssed ysvey oy], °¢ *Sd| OY 0} payor} - Yor Ysno1yy pMaq a3 -189} SIT JUIAII 04 pula ayy ‘sassol “JO ST I Yoryar Aq “QiMeq oy, *S UP sopol OY SuLAoYs [aq Y “OT | 3B UAOSs qIIs-eATMS O43 ‘ssef Y °g | aq} 0} payRyye [ATMS OU, “F “1194 OULD “1 “09 abud song or) “amd aya fo wounds a OS WOSk Ta THE PEREGRINE FALCON. 51 to the suspicion, for instance, that they supposed a specific difference between the haggard and falcon- gentle (or genteel), whereas the former is simply the mature, wild-caught bird; the latter is the eyess. The young naturalist or young falconer may, no doubt, be easily led into error by the change of plumage at the first moult; but a peregrine, kept till he is a year and a half old, is the best and most practical instructor. Out of this confusion, however, rises the peregrine; perhaps the handsomest and most courageous of all birds of prey, certainly the pet and favourite of faleoners. No other bird in the world is more widely distributed. From North America to China and New Holland, that peculiar and brilliant stoop, known and loved by sportsmen for ages, is a terror not only to the weak, but often to the strong, among countless varieties of shape, size, and plumage. In our own country it is, alas! rarely seen. A strange and anomalous civilisation is fast blotting out the most complete type of speed, strength, and courage which belongs of right to these islands, and which the Migh- tiest Hand placed upon all their cliffs, as an index to the hearts and prowess that should protect them. This glorious falcon almost invariably seizes his prey on the wing; or perhaps, to speak more cor- rectly, strikes it on the wing, Individuals, however, particular; and yet, as they moulted their hawks, it is difficult to believe that they were puzzled by a change of plumage. E2 52 FALCONRY. differ as to their mode of taking quarry. The high, long, rapid stoop, with a passing cut* of the hind talons at the end of it, is the more brilliant, but perhaps the clutch is the more effective manner. To speak as a falconer, these birds differ in quality. I have seen a tiercel driven into the middle of a thick’ tree by a pair of kestrels; while, on the other hand, last year, an eyess tiercel repeatedly flew herons, though, of course, without the least chance of holding. The excess of courage, I am glad to say, is far more common than the excess of cowardice; and the pere- grine is bold enough, as well as strong enough, for the game of this country. On the coast the prey of this bird is usually water- fowl and wild pigeons, which inhabit the rocks; also jackdaws, where these are found. For his prey in- land, reference can be made to the first chapter of this work. I think I need only add an occasional small rabbit or leveret. The nest is made in the ridge or hollow of a rock ; it is of rough construction and of coarse material. The eggs are three or four in number ; colour, rufous brown, with darker patches. The following is from “Falconry in the British Isles:” — “In colour the young peregrine differs con- * If you hold out a piece of meat to hawks at hack you will sce the nature of the stoop. They seem to fly downwards for a short distance to get impetus ; they then close their wings and, coming wedge-like through the air, appear to rake their hind talons through the object stooped at, their legs being kept quite stiff and still, NATURAL HISTORY. 53 siderably from the adult bird. During the first year the plumage is brown, the feathers of the back and wings being edged with a lighter tint; the breast and . the thighs are more or less rufous, with dark brown longitudinal streaks. Whilst in the nest, and for some time after leaving it, the young birds have a blueish slate-coloured bloom over the darker parts of the body, which gives them some resemblance in colour to their parents; as soon, however, as they begin to bathe, this bloom disappears and they be- come quite brown. Like all other birds, they differ much in intensity of colour, being found both of light and dark varieties, with the intermediate shades. The colour of the cere and eyelids is at first blue, which generally changes by degrees to a yellow tint (we knew an instance of it changing to yellow in one night), and, by the end of the first year, becomes bright yellow, provided the bird be in health; the tarsi and feet from the first are light yellow, ac- quiring depth of colour by age. At the first moult the brown plumage is replaced by one of a blue slate-colour, approaching to black on the head, wings, and tail, while the longitudinal streaks on the breast and thighs give place to transverse bars.” The different sexes differ very materially in size and weight; a full-grown female weighing about two and a half pounds; a full-grown male one and three quarter pound. If we would take the eyrie of the peregrine, we E3 54 FALCONRY, must leave trees behind, pass over all flat land, and search among something strong, bold, and dangerous, having a character like that for which we seek. High cliffs, and the rocky and perpendicular parts of in- land mountains, hold the nest,and a hazardous thing it is sometimes to reach it. Plenty of men, however, and even boys, may be found willing to get them- selves fastened to a rope, and so let down by their companions in search of nestlings, which ought to bring them a guinea a head. I believe the nests may be taken with perfect safety if pains be taken also. The strength and roundness of the cord should be well looked to; the person descending should have plenty of courage; and those who hold the rope moust remember that a human life is hanging at the other end of it, which it is a sin to trifle with by any jest or inattention. The person descending should carefully dislodge any loose stones with his feet. If, when the nest is reached, it be found that the feathers of the young birds are only a little way through the down, the adveriturer should signify this circumstance to his friends above, or at least let them understand that, for some good reason or other, he requires to be wound up. A day or two later the descent may be again made. If the young birds appear to be within a few days or a week of flying, let them be taken.“ They should be carefully placed on hay or straw in a covered basket, to which may be attached a string communicating with the top of the MODE OF TAKING THE NEST. 55 cliff, so that the young hawks may be drawn up before their captor reaches his friends. If they have to be sent to a distance, they must go, of course, by a pas- senger-train, having been previously well fed with fresh beefsteak, cut into small pieces,—each bird being allowed as much as he will take. Should the young birds be very forward, the hamper in which they are sent must not only be lined so as to present a soft surface to the young feathers, but so thoroughly as that light shall be all but excluded. Darkness keeps the birds quiet, and prevents much mischief. I have lined both hamper and lid with old carpet when I have sent hawks to a distance, and never found that the birds suffered in the least from want of air. Doubled matting or thin drugget is good. I will now suppose the young hawks arrived at their destination. They have been expected, and some preparations made for their reception. These are not always precisely the same in every falconer’s establishment; but I will mention first what I con- sider the best. Let a good-sized wine-hamper be fastened against a wall *, at about the height of a man’s breast, in such manner that the opening shall be presented to your face, with the lid at the bottom, protruding like a platform, and fixed horizontally, * A small, unused outhouse, having a large doorway, is an cx- cellent place for the hamper. The young birds have in this way no rain, little wind, and get plenty of air. ‘They must not, however, be out of the reach of the morning sun. E4 56 ‘FALCONRY. with only this deviation, that- there be the slightest inclination upwards. Into this hamper, which must be protected from rain and wind, put first plenty of clean straw, and then the young birds, with a bell and jesses * to each. re In these chapters I intend to take no knowledge, however slight, on the subject of falconry for granted, and to associate myself for the nonce with those who speak, in their cant phrase, of “the mind being at first a blank sheet of paper, which requires to be written on,” and so forth. Therefore I think it ne- cessary in this place to say what hawk-bells and jesses are. Now, Messrs. Benhams and Froud, of Chandos Street, Charing Cross, have sent me capital bells; and, with regard to jesses, any one may make them for himself. They are made of leather; and perhaps the best kind for the purpose is dog-skin, well tanned. Hounds’ skin, generally to be procured in the neigh- bourhood of kennels, is strongly recommended. White, or whit, leather is also good; but it requires constant greasing, especially in wet weather; if this is not attended to it gets hard and stiff. I invariably soak the strips in cold water and stretch them before making them into shape: Each hawk requires two jesses, one on each leg. To make these, take a piece * Some excellent falconers omit the jesses till the hawks are taken up, fearing that the young birds should be entangled by them. When used during hack they should be short and of stiff leather, with a very small. slit at the swivel end. I have never had an acci- dent with these, — nor indeed with any. BELLS AND JESSES. 57 of the leather, of either kind mentioned above, and cut it into strips of seven or eight inches in length, and more than half an inch in width; now, with a sharp knife laid on a corner of one of the ends of a strip, which itself is placed flat on a board, boldly’ take off the other corner with a long oblique stroke, which should not reach the side of your strip till it has, lengthways, cleanly cut at least an inch. As it touches the side at this point, or almost before it touches it, incline the knife inwards, and, with an- other long oblique stroke, cut till the leather is nar- rowed to less than the third of an inch. Continue that breadth, as you still cut on towards the opposite end of the strip, until the knife is within an inch and a half of the end; then turn the blade a little out- wards, so as to make a bulge here, tapering off, how- ever, to a point. Half an inch from this point stamp a small hole, and cut a slit from it, two-thirds or more of an inch in length, in the direction of the end at which you commenced your operations. This is for the swivel. Make a smaller slit at that end, about half an inch or more from is point; also an- other, about an inch and a quarter further down the strip. There are now three slits,—two at the broader end, where you commenced cutting, and one at the narrower or swivel end, where you left off. Having made two such jesses, write your name on one and your address on the other; the ink will last a few weeks at any rate. Now get some one to hold one of 58 FALCONRY. the young birds,—a hood being on the head of the hawk if you like—gloves certainly on the hands of your friend. Take one of the jesses, holding it at the - end where there are two slits. I will call the slit nearest the point or end, No. 1; the slit “an inch and a quarter further down the strip,” No. 2, Take the point of the jessé and pass it through No. 2 till No. 1 appears through the opening, inclosing the bird’s leg as you do so; now take the swivel end of the jesse, draw it through No. 1, the whole jesse, excepting the portion already disposed of, following. This makes all secure. When both jesses are on, they are fastened to the ring or ordinary swivel as follows :— Pass the swivel end of the jesse through one of the rings; pass the second ring through the loop of the jesse; press the loop onwards (opening it) to the extremity of the first ring. This, I hope, will not seem very complicated when the jesse and swivel are in your hand: the process is very simple in reality, though on paper it does not appear so. The manner of using the spring swivel is evident, and requires no explanation. The bell is attached above one of the jesses by a bewit, having the same kind of fastening as the jesses themselves. Let us now return to the hamper in which are snugly deposited two or three young peregrines (a nest holds from one to three, seldom four), properly equipped. They have come perhaps from a distance, and it is THE LURE. 59 necessary that they should be well fed at once, Take therefore a fresh juicy steak, raw of course, and, hav- ing cut it into small oblong pieces, present a morsel on your finger, or on a short stick which has no sharp point, to the boldest bird. From him proceed to an- other, and continue your rounds, occasionally pausing, but often (especially as you administer a dainty piece) shrieking on the whistle you intend to use afterwards in the field. A guard’s railway-whistle is not bad for this purpose. Feed in this manner as long as the birds can be induced to eat, three times a day, and this at stated hours, say, six or seven—one at noon— six or seven; but whatever the hours may be, keep to them. It will not be amiss if the midday meal consist of the chopped flesh of rabbits, pigeons, or rooks. Beef is somewhat heating and feverish food, if not relieved by a less stimulating diet. In a day or two you will find the birds on the ridge of the hamper’s lid, expecting your approach. It is not absolutely necessary at this period to show them the lure, but I would advise you to do so. And here I must make a slight digression in order to describe this instrument.* * The Indian lure consists of four jackdaw's wings made (so to speak) into two, by fastening each couple face to face, and tying the pair so formed at the joints. This lure is tossed to the approaching falcon, who catches it in the air. A long string prevents “car- rying :” there is no meat attached to it, the falconer taking the hawk from it with food in his hand. In breaking hawks to this, however, meat may be added, 60 FALCONRKY. The lure may be made in several ways, any of which will answer the purpose. . For instance, take a heavy piece of wood, and cut it into somewhat the form of a horseshoe, which may weigh about 14lb. At the two ends fasten the wings of a pigeon, as that will probably be the bird, to which you will first “ enter” your young hawks.’ Through the sides bore -holes, and pass strings through them, by which, when ‘the lure is in use, food can be attached. Red cloth may or may not, as you pleasé, be nailed on a portion P f the sides. In the centre of the curve, at the out- fside, fix a ring; and to this ring fasten the strap of a thot-belt by its swivel. Here is a lure. It is suffi- “cient for your present purpose, though hereafter you “will probably use both live and dead pigeons, &c. The nestlings standing on the lid, eagerly attentive to your whistle (which I recommend you now to sound for a minute or two before you present yourself to them), gently place the lure, well ayered with beef, in the midst of the hungry creatures. Encourage them to peck at it— constantly, however, supplying them with the choicest pieces from the hand. On the next occasion swing the lure round your head as you approach, taking care, however, not to alarm them ; they will soon place this movement in their list of signs which denote a full meal. In a day or two the hawks will have left the hamper, or be found perched on the top of it. It is now that the falconer may add a peculiar shout or cry to the whistle and FALCONERS’ CRIES. 61 swung lure. This sound is designed to induce the birds to approach him, and therefore must be distinct from that which he intends to employ when he would cheer them on the flying quarry. It may be “ Yo- ho-hup, yohup, yohup ;” or “ Hi-away! (boy or lass) hi-away!” a cail which I use, and learnt I know not where. If the birds understood English, I confess there would be perfect insanity in employing that which bids departure while it requires approach. I may as well mention here, in a sort of paren- thesis, that “ Hooha, ha, ha, ha!” is a good cry for inciting hawks to make every effort when the quarry is viewed, and also for calling their attention to it. These syllables, when shrieked out on a high note, have a wild, dashing, blood-stirring spirit in them that, suits the occasion well. “Who-whoop” is the death-cry; and “ala volée!” or “au vol!” iscommon as a warning cry in heron-hawking when the quarry passes sufficiently near to justify the falconers in unhooding and dismissing their winged warriors. to the encounter. However, you and I, reader, are concerned at present only with the first sound, which signifies to the hawk that he must approach you; and your great care of course will be to associate this invitation with something exceedingly agreeable. Now, we all differ in tastes; but I imagine that you can offer nothing to a nestling peregrine which he will esteem a greater or more exquisite delicacy than raw beef- 62 FALCONRY. steak. Offer it, therefore, when you make this cry, having now (as the hawks begin to take wing a little and leave the hamper) a lure for each bird, on which the meat is carefully fastened. During the first few times that these lures are thrown down before the birds, let the meat upon them be juicy and tender; but as soon as the hawks fly to them eagerly, change. your policy, and garnish the lures with tough though fresh pieces. As the birds are tugging and straining to get their meal, quietly lie down on the grass amongst them, and as you turn yourself from one side to the other, place, with a shrill sound on the whistle to give a point to the circumstance, a pe- culiarly juicy mouthful into each beak. Allow the hungry hawks to pull again, and still continue to produce your choice bits; now coaxing the birds with words, and now whistling softly. Prolong the meals as much as possible, always showing that your hand contains something better than is to be found on the lures. The object of all this is to nip in the bud that dreadful fault of “carrying,” the seeds of which are in all hawks, and which, if encouraged, through your own carelessness, or, indeed, if not checked by your forethought, will grow into a habit so distressing to the falconer, that I know of no other equally villanous. It is evident that a bird taught to understand that you feed him easily, and with more palatable food than any which he himself can procure by the greatest amount of pulling, will not, in the first few instances “FLYING AT HACK.” 63 at any rate, be anxious to move away at your ap- proach, on his capture of a pigeon or partridge. It is only honest, however, to say that a very little mis- management, when the time arrives, may induce him to move with the third or fourth quarry which he may take; but I will anticipate no directions when I can avoid doing so, and full advice and warnings will be given in their places. Day after day the hawks will fly further and further from home, but will return at feeding times (which may now be twice a day), and that quickly when they hear the shout or whistle, and see the swinging lure. They are now “ flying at hack.” They will become, however, I am sorry to say, somewhat wilder as they gain strength; but if the lures are so heavy that they cannot easily be moved by the birds, and if the meals are carefully prolonged, in the manner before described, you may continue to feed the hawks from the hand for two or three weeks. Probably one will be wilder than the rest,-and you may possibly have ultimately to take him up in the bow-net, an instrument which I shall presently de- scribe. If you prefer it, however, take him up by hand as soon as it becomes difficult, and before it becomes impossible, to touch the jesses; it is by these that you must secure him, not of course attempting to lay your grasp on the bird himself. It used to be considered absolutely necessary to fly hawks at hack if they were to turn out swift and good birds; but 64 FALCONRY. recent experience has shown that it is possible to have first-rate high-flying eyesses which have never been flown at hack at all. Hack, however, must be very desirable, as it tends to stretch and strengthen the growing muscles of the wings, and also as it affords a fine opportunity for making birds to the lure; teaching them, moreover, at little cost of time and trouble, to return to the spot from which they started. Still, for my own part, I should take up a bird that had been at liberty for a fortnight, if his conduct seemed to threaten the use of the bow-net. But this is a matter of choice, and I am far from insisting upon it. The usual period for hack is about a month or five weeks; sometimes longer. If it be protracted after birds are forward enough to prey for themselves, leaden weights, covered with soft leather, must be fastened to their legs to prevent them doing so. There is another method, adopted by some fal- coners, of rearing nestlings at hack; but it has this very grave objection, that it forbids, in a great mea- sure at any rate, making hawks to the lure as long as it lasts. The young birds are placed in a large outhouse, on clean straw; and, as soon as they can move about easily, and tear the food, it is fastened on blocks at stated feeding-times, when they are called to it by the whistle, &c. The door of the out- house is left open, so that they may fly out what strong enough to do so. It is said that for weeks they will come to the blocks; and when it is required GLOVES, —— HOODS. 65 to take them up, they may be captured by a long string attached to the door, and pulled from a dis- tance to close it at feeding-time. Let us suppose, however, that the former plan of hamper and lure has been adopted, and, after a few weeks’ hack, one of the hawks “taken up;” the de- tails of which process will appear in the next chapter. It will be necessary now to look well to the jesses, changing them if they are injured; a hood also must be provided that will fit the bird comfortably. You will require, too, glove, swivel, leash, and block. I must content myself now with a short notice of these implements, and leave to another chapter the par- ticulars which belong to their use. A falconer’s glove should be made of the thickest and best buckskin: a good saddler can make it. To colour it, use a mixture of yellow ochre, burnt um- ber powdered, and water; the whole to be the thick- ness of cream. It is to be laid on with a brush, and beaten out when dry. If the glove is very dirty, it should be first washed with a brush with soda and ‘warm water. . With regard to the making of hoods, I feel it to be in vain, without a considerable assistance from wood- cuts, to offer any directions which would be useful or even intelligible to my readers, and satisfactory to myself. Imay mention, however, that hoods are made ; of calf-leather for a peregrine,‘ which, when wet, is stretched on a wooden block (not to be confused with F 66 FALCONRY. the “block? on which hawks sit), cut somewhat into the shape and size of a hawk’s head, without the beak ; great care being taken that the wood bulges out in the region of the eyes. Three pieces of leather are used in making a Dutch hood, though it may be fashioned out of one piece. In the Persian or Syrian pattern we have the addition of a buckskin curtain behind, or more properly speaking, perhaps, this curtain supplies the place of a portion of the back of the hood, which is cut away to make room for it. The side pieces are ornamented with velvet or bright cloth; the fastenings are behind; and there is a plume at the top, by which the. hood is’ generally held when it is placed on the bird’s head or removed from it. Imperfect as this description necessarily is, the imperfection is of little consequence, as excellent coloured illustrations are to be found in “ Falconry in the British Isles,” and Mr. W. Pape, gunmaker, West Gate, Newcastle-on-Tyne, supplies hoods ready made at a moderate price.* Swivels are supplied by Messrs. Benham and Froud, Chandos Street, Charing Cross. The spring swivels answer for use’in the field; for the block they are not so safe as the ordinary ring-swivel. However, should their simplicity tempt their use on all occa- sions, at least guard them by a piece of leather * * In fact all hawk-furniture may be had from Myr. Pape ; also from Mr, Pells, Feltwell, Brandon, Norfolk. SWIVEL. —- LEASH. —— BLOCK. 67 stitched in such a manner that it can be moved over the opening. The leash is simply a strong strip of leather, full two feet in length, one end of which is either fastened to the block, or wrapped round the hand of the fal- coner, as the case may be; the other end is attached to the swivel, and the swivel to the jesses. Strong calf-leather, called by shoemakers “ kip,” is the best for leashes. I can give no better description of a peregrine’s block than the following, taken from “ Falconry in the British Isles:” —* For a peregrine this block should be about a foot in height, six inches in dia- meter at the top, and nine at the base, to prevent it being overturned. An iron spike may be driven into the centre of the bottom of the block, which, running into the ground, keeps it firm. For facility in moving, a ring may be counter-sunk into the top of the block. Ifa hole is bored quite through the wood of the block it will be less liable to split. The blocks that are placed under cover should be padded on the top, to prevent the hawk’s feet from becoming swol- len,— a disease they are apt to acquire if kept at all times on a hard surface.” . . In the next chapter we will take up the hawks from hack, break them to the hood, and do various other things. F2 68 FALCONRY. CHAP. V. THE PEREGRINE (CONTINUED). — PRESENCE OF STRANGERS, DOGS, ETC, — WONDERS ACCOMPLISHED IN A FEW WEEKS, — HAWKS TAKEN UP FROM HACK, AND BROKEN TO THE HOOD.— NOT TO BE TEASED.— LESSON IN “ WAITING ON.” — ENTERING TO PIGEONS. —“ CARRYING” AGAIN.— WAITING ON”? AGAIN.—WHAT THE TYRO MAY EXPECT FROM HIS BIRDS. — GLIMPSE OF CHAPTERS VI. AND VII. Our young hawks* have been flying at hack a few weeks, and have assumed a very different appearance from that which they presented when we were first introduced to them in the hamper. The white down has entirely left them, and they have become fine sleek birds. I hope that, even before they quite left the edge of the hamper, they were accustomed to the presence of dogs and horses—at any rate of dogs, which, per- haps, were fed near them. I hope also that they saw somewhat. more of human society than that afforded by the visits of their trainer; nay, the pre- sence of children, if they had it, was far from objec- * Poregrines are commonly strong on the wing early in July, and may, as a rule, be taken from the nest in the first week of June. BREAKING TO THE HOOD. 69 tionable. When the birds became tolerably strong on the wing, it was no doubt found that a shyness, which at first was only just perceptible, slightly in- creased day by day. Notwithstanding this, it is to be desired that the presence of dogs and strangers was persevered in; carefully, of course, as the hawks were found to bear it: pains also, I will suppose, were taken to prevent any sudden fright, such as that arising, for instance, from the playfulness of a young dog, or the snappishness of an old one. Assuming that all this, or something like it, was done, taking up the hawks, breaking them to the hood, and entering them to quarry, will not be found difficult tasks ; and the truth is, that the foundation of their training has been laid, and its rudiments acquired already. For, observe what has been done! Birds, which, had they been reared by their parents on their own wild crags, would, at this period of their existence, scarcely have permitted you to come within shot of them, are not only so domesticated, but so dependent upon yourself (as they imagine at least) for their daily food, that, instead of dreading your approach, they positively look for it with anxiety, and welcome it with pleasure. More than this, they have been taught to comprehend the meaning of sounds and signals. They know that a certain tone of your voice, and a particular motion of your hand, are intended to inform them that their immediate presence is required, and that their obedience will F3 70 FALCONRY. be rewarded. Settled round you on the grass, they look for your assistance in enabling them to procure the choicest morsels, and even exhibit a kind of jealousy when they perceive that you indulge one of the party more than the rest. You have, in short, in the space of two or three weeks, established in the hearts of those of the fowls of the air which are pro- verbially the most wild, a confidence in your honesty and a dependence upon your power and kindness which, I will make bold to say, no sportsman, and certainly no naturalist, can look upon with feelings short of wonder and respect. This is what you have done, or rather what you will have done when you have in practice followed these directions up to the conclusion of the last chapter. It must now be my business to inform you what you shall do. Hack being over, the hawks must be taken up as quietly and gently as circumstances will permit. If they have been flown with jesses, and have remained tolerably tame, it will not be difficult to secure them after a simple fashion. Approach them 4s usual whilst they feed, and insert the hook of the spring- swivel into the loops of the jesses; the swivel being of course attached to the leash, and the leash to your gloved hand. Lift the bird which you are taking up (and I would not take up more than one a day) by the lure on which he is feeding—your hold on the leash, somewhere near the swivel, being firm; carry him, if he will permit you to do so, slowly to the BREAKING TO THE HOOD. 71 door of a partly darkened outhouse. As he is finish- ing the last few mouthfuls, walk into the room. Try, as the last large piece is going down, to slip on a hood which has been well cut away about the beak, and which, whilst fitting most easily and having no unfair pressure upon any one part of the head, is yet capable of being well and securely fastened. The meal which the bird was discussing when you cap- tured him ought to have been a small one—the leg of a rook, or part of a leg, for instance; because it is @ maxim amongst falconers that “ bating on a full crop” is bad, and sometimes even dangerous. Re- member that you may not be skilful enough to put on the hood at the first, second, or third attempt, and that the hawk may make some violent struggles before you succeed—he may even continue them afterwards. You have succeeded, however, let us suppose. The bird, perhaps, is still rather sharp-set ; give him a chance then to “pull through the hood” at a small and delicate piece of beef, or a pigeon’s leg: he will most likely decline. It is of little con- sequence: you need not be disappointed. I will suppose that you took up this bird a couple of hours before dark: carry him tll dark. You would like to take the hood off to-night, in order to see how he bears the replacing it. If you dare make the venture and the hawk show the least disposition to “ pull through the hood,” take it off by candle-light. There is certainly something in lamp and candle-light F4 72 ‘FALCONRY peculiarly adapted for breaking hawks to the ‘hood ; it is better than twilight. There must be, I suppose, a sort of dazzle and indistinctness about it to eyes opening on it for the first time. Hood and unhood two or three times, letting the bird “ pull through,” if he will. When this is over, take him to the out- house which you have set apart for hawks—the “mews,” if you like to call it so; fasten the leash to, and place the hawk upon, the block. Now draw a thick curtain over the window, or close the shutter ; quietly unhood your pupil, and say “ Good night” to him. (Or you may, if you please, keep him hooded for a night or two—this is Captain Salvin’s practice ; in this case absolute darkness is not necessary.) The floor of the mews must be covered with sand several inches deep. A ventilator may be placed in one of the walls; and the window made of glass guarded inside by perpendicular, not horizontal, wooden bars. I have described the “taking up” and hooding of a tame and good-tempered bird; but I by no means answer for it that the majority of peregrines will be found like him. On the contrary, it is probable that you will not be able to ‘take the first step with comfort; I mean, you will hardly perhaps carry him on the lure to the darkened outhouse. Suppose, then, he should bate off on the way, and hang by the jesses, perhaps, screaming and biting ; or suppose you found it necessary to take him up with the bow-net —in these cases a hood must be put on as quickly as BREAKING TO THE HOOD. 73 possible, and in the most gentle manner that circum- stances will permit; the bird must be carried and put in the mew, as before described. In the morn- ing you will take the bird (be he wild or tame) from the block, not by touching a single feather belonging to him, but by carefully placing your hand under his feet, and so getting him upon it—a little light hav- ing been let into the room. By this light you will (if he were left unhooded) hood him—the leash, of course, having been disengaged from the block, and wound round your gloved hand. Perhaps it need scarcely be mentioned that the left hand is invariably employed by falconers as a seat for the hawk when carried. ‘The hood which you are using, it has been said, has rather a large opening at the beak; the bird can therefore just get a glimpse of something red on your glove; draw the beef over his feet and he is almost certain to seize it with his bill, and nearly as certain, having once tasted it, to continue his meal. Move now (a small bit of meat having been demolished) towards the half-darkened outhouse; open the strings of the hood with your teeth and with your right hand ; slip it off, and on again, speedily; take a step out into the broad daylight, and offer a morsel instantly. Continue this hooding and unhooding, invariably rewarding the hawk, if he will eat, the moment the hood is on. In all probability it will be necessary to wet the bird thoroughly with cold water 74 FALCONRY. from a sponge, during the first few lessons; you will find him not nearly so inclined to bate while the feathers are soaked and heavy; and if the water is made to come from a distance, it gives a shock which is of service. In a few days he will begin to look for the hood, as an introduction to a feast—that is, if you have avoided anything approaching to a “ fray” whilst teaching him to wear it. Hawks are not like dogs in disposition; they distrust you, even if you tease them in the purest fun; and they remember for weeks any exhibition of bad temper on the part of their trainer. The eyess, I will now suppose, is thoroughly broken to the hood; sits, bareheaded, without show- ing signs of fear in the presence of strangers, and dogs; and when tolerably sharp set, flies well to the lure.* As it is absolutely necessary that a peregrine in- tended for game or magpie hawking should “wait on” properly, a few lessons may be given in the following manner before the hawk is introduced to quarry :—Let him be taken out, hooded and sharp- set, by an assistant, who should stand about 100 yards from the falconer. The latter is now to swing the lure, whistling or shouting for the hawk a moment after the former has freed the jesses from * Some falconers fly a hawk of uncertain temper once or twice with a creance at this period, lest it should rake away. If the bird has not been flown at hack it is quite necessary to do so. « “ WAITING-ON,” 75 the swivel and unhooded. On the bird’s near ap- proach the falconer must conceal the lure for a few seconds; this will cause the peregrine to mount, in short circles, the better to look for his suddenly- vanished -meal, which he must then be allowed to enjoy, the lure being thrown on the grass. After a good meal, he is of course hooded and taken home, the last two or three pieces having been given through the hood. During the third or fourth lesson the hawk may be kept rather longer on the wing; but great care must be taken not to go into extremes in this matter, or the “pitch” may be lowered—a great misfortune indeed, as it cannot be too high. These lessons over, and the hawk being more than commonly sharp-set, and confined to the block, give him a live pigeon from the hand.* If a large one, its wing might be brailed before offering it to a tierce; but the precaution is seldom necessary. Let the hawk kill and “take his pleasure” on the quarry, 2. é. eat as much as he likes. On the following day, give a very slight meal in the morning only; and on the third day, an hour after feeding-time, give a live pigeon on a long string, or “ creance,” as you will re- member such a string is called. After another inter- val of a day, take the hawk into a tolerably open * When a pigeon is killed at the block, put an iron-eyed pin in the ground near the block: by a string, which passes through the eye of the pin, the pigeon can be drawn within the hawk’s reach. 76 FALCONRY. place, and fly him at a pigeon that has a couple of long feathers taken out of one wing. The peregrine is now “entered” to pigeons, being ready to fly strong untouched ones; and I have to make only two lead- ing observations before I dismiss your bird to fly at this quarry three times a week for a fortnight or more. In the first place, it is to be most carefully observed that the great pains taken when the hawks were at hack to prevent them from contracting the habit of “carrying,” must not be rendered useless by careless- ness now. Go up therefore quietly, but yet with confidence, to your eyess when he has killed; whistle gently, as you always do at feeding-times, and, if he be on the first pigeon he ever caught in a fair flight, put the hook-swivel through the loops in the jesses, peg him down, and suffer him to take his pleasure on his prize. On a subsequent occasion, allow the hawk to commence eating before you lift him on the fist. He is raised on it simply by your seizing the quarry, which he will not loose; secure him to the swivel, and feed him up from the quarry or from a piece of beef placed under the quarry’s wing, if you have done with him for the day. If, however, you expect him to af- ford another flight, hold the neck or “inke” of the pigeon between the fingers of your left hand, the body being suspended under it: now cut away at the very root of the neck till the body or “ pelt” drops, or is left in your hand. Hide this in your pouch or pocket at “* WAITING-ON.” 77 once. When the head is finished, hood the hawk, giving one small mouthful through the hood. The object of all this (and the great secret in preventing -hawks carrying) is to make them believe, as far as possible, that you take nothing from them, while, in point of fact, you deprive them of nearly all the wild quarry (in game-hawking at any rate, and always when you desire a second flight) which they kill. If these minute details seem troublesome, pray remem- ber that your hawks are scarcely formed yet, and that no trouble is thrown away which will tend to insure you good birds for the season, and may be for years. I am certain that the taking a hawk roughly, or even suddenly, from his prey, is sure, in a very short time, and at any period of his life, to induce the tiresome habit against which I am so anxious to guard. The second special matter I wished to mention is, that “waiting on,” which has been taught to a certain extent with the lure, must be still taught with pigeons. You will not long be without an instance of a chased pigeon dashing into low cover just in time to save himself from a stoop. The peregrine, partly from his nature and partly from practice at the lure, will ‘wait on” in circles above the place where the quarry “put in.” Now, either get this quarry out in a very few minutes, or —after sending in the spaniel and making a show of beating the hedge—take a live pigeon from your pouch or basket, shorten its flight. considerably, and release it with head away from the 78 FALCONRY. cover, making it appear that you have just driven the real quarry out, and shouting “ hooha, ha, ha!” with all your might, running also in the direction of the pigeon. The hawk will kill at the first stoop, and consequently will be strongly impressed with the opi- nion that “waiting on,” when beaters are underneath, is a most interesting and profitable proceeding. Here, then, is a TRAINED PEREGRINE: he is entered to one quarry, viz. pigeons, and is ready to be entered to others. Ifa falcon, she may be flown at anything, from a snipe to a wild duck,—nay, even perhaps at a. heron, though passage-lawks are commonly used for so large a bird. Rooks and grouse she may, as a general rule, be made to take beautifully; but the more she is kept to any one quarry the better she will fly it. The best tiercels will take grouse and rooks; those of not the highest courage will certainly take partridges, and very likely take them well. I only glance at these matters now in order that the tyro may have an idea of what he may expect from ‘his birds: every kind of hawking will presently be treated in detail. T was exceedingly anxious to bring my readers to the point whither I have, in fact, conducted them, before this chapter should be closed. But, in em- ploying space for this purpose, I have been compelled to omit directions for the daily management of hawks. These, however, I purpose to supply in the next chapter ; for in truth, my good pupils, though I have GLIMPSE OF CHAPS. VI. VII. 79 been with you in the field, I have left you very much to your own devices with regard to feeding, bathing, and housing your hawks, &c. You will find also my promise redeemed with regard to “imping;” neither shall the “ bow-net” be forgotten, though perhaps that may not be explained till we reach Chapter VII., on the catching and training of pas- sage-hawks, &e. We are now in the midst of rudiments. I know that they are dry, and I can conceive them to be difficult. But wait with a little patience till we are out of the wood ;— we will shout then. Yes, I really hope to make some of these chapters interesting, when I shall show you the heron taken on his passage ; the grouse struck down amongst the purple heather, as he flies like a black ball over it; the cunning magpie falling to “Highland Laddie’s” * stoop ; an eight-pound hare to “ Bushman’s” clutch ; and the rapid lark driven at last out of the white cloud, after a ringing, panting flight, by a bird who is quiet enough now, with head under wing, about thirty yards from the room in which I am writing. * “Highland Laddie.” Since the above was written, this ex- cellent tiercel, the property of Captain Salvin, lost an eye, during its absence from its master for a day or two. 8q FALCONRY. CHAP. VI. DAILY MANAGEMENT OF TRAINED PEREGRINES WHEN AT HOME, AS SHOWN IN THE PRACTICE OF FALCONERS ; AND A PLAN FOR IT RECOMMENDED. — FINE AND STORMY WEATHER. — THE PERCH OR SCREEN. —‘‘ GORGE NIGHT.” — CASTINGS. — FEEDING. — BATHING. — IMPING.— WIRE FENCES.—SPURIOUS AND TRUE SPORTSMEN.— A LOST HAWK.— THE VOICES OF THE PAST. “THs merciful man is merciful to his beast,” truly ; and so is the practical man. He who can eat his dinner, and warm himself by his fire, and criticise the flavour of his wine, while he knows that his dumb servant is shivering, hungry, and miserable outside, is simply himself a brute; but the man who supposes that the faithful creature he has so shamefully treated will, however willing, be capable of rendering him in future the service he may require, is definitely brutish —he is an ass. In this chapter we shall consider the daily manage- ment and treatment of trained peregrines when they are not in the field; how we may best make them comfortable when they rest, and therefore useful when they work. And I have only to premise that, in writing and in reading this, the wild parentage of our hawks must not be forgotten. Domesticated them- DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT. 81 selves, or semi-domesticated, they yet come of a family which never felt a chain; for the imprisoned hawk, like “the imprisoned eagle, will not pair ;” and therefore, when it would be cruel to refuse a horse a warm stable, or a dog his snug kennel, it might be still more unkind to shut up the peregrine falcon in her mew. Falconers differ among themselves somewhat in the daily management of their birds. Some take pere- grines into a room or outhouse at night in all seasons, and in all weather, while others allow them to remain out of doors almost from one -year’s end to another. In India, hawks are kept hooded all day when they are at rest; and in England, especially in the hands of our best falconers, they scarcely ever wear the hood (though of course thoroughly “made” to it): it is only worn, as a rule, when they are carried to the field. Blocks are solely used by some falconers; others adopt almost entirely the screen, or perch, at any rate in-doors: in most establishments you will see both. The truth is, that hawks may be kept in tolerable health under any of these systems; but I believe that, by cutting away the ugly and awkward portions of each, the remainders will dovetail into one another, and form a tolerably perfect whole. Let us see then whether the result is not strong and shapely. You have a south wall. Do you object to have a long sloping roof — perhaps a thatched one is best — projecting about seven or eight feet, at the height of & 82 FALCONRY. seven at the highest part, run along this wall for some yards? You may have the thing made to look very -rustic and sightly, and any one who can knock up a rough summer-house can knock up this. Let him close in the sides thoroughly, but leave the front. open. He must be careful too about the position of any props which he may place to support the roof: if they are used, they must be at equal and proper distances; but I decidedly recommend that the shed be cut into compartments, and the dividing walls will secure the roof. These compartments may be eight or even nine feet in length; and their sides, and also the wall, should be hung, or rather perhaps covered, with matting. In the centre of each, by driving its spike firmly in the ground, fix a peregrine’s block. That ground may be turf; but the block should be just surrounded by a small but deep bed of sand, and this sand is to be changed frequently. This year I shall try all sand behind the blocks, and all turf in front. If it happen that some low evergreens are not far from the front of the shed, so much the better ; at any rate, it must be protected as much as possible from the wind. Canvass, a yard high, pegged in the shape of a triangle, is useful as a guard against wind ; the apex being the point farthest from the shed, and opposite its middle, while the base of the triangle is represented by the front of the shed. Here is a dormitory for the warm months, and a place of shelter in bad weather during the day, as nearly as may be, all through the year. On fine calm days, blocks and CHANGES OF WEATHER. 83 birds should be placed on the open lawn, under the shade of a tree when the sun is very powerful, and as night approaches conveyed to the shed. It is better, perhaps, to have two sets of blocks, one set for the shed and the other for the open. But in moving the birds from one position to another, the falconer has only to call the hawk to his fist by a “tiring,” or well-picked leg or wing of a rook, &c., and then to hold the jesses between his fingers — all this with the left hand; with the right hand he will either carry the block, or untie the leash from it (to be fastened to another block), just as his set be single or double. In very windy, perhaps in very wet, weather, but certainly in drifting snow from the south, it will be necessary to take the hawks into an outhouse, such as this, viz. a dry room having several inches of dry sand on its floor, and the window of which can be completely darkened by a shutter. Here they may rest on blocks, or on the perch or screen, day or night, or both, till the storm is over.* Care must be taken to make the darkness complete; hawks do not dislike its sedative influence; and it keeps them perfectly quiet. The perch or screen is a simple contrivance. It consists of a broad horizontal bar, placed breast high, and resting at each end upon perpendicular shafts, the bottoms of which are either heavily weighted, or * Darkness may be dispensed with, if the floor is well littered with straw over the sand. Indeed there should be straw in any case. G2 84 FALCONRY. secured to the floor, or attached to a long wooden tray, full of sand or sawdust. The last method is the best. The bar, as I have called it, the perch itself in fact, is covered with green baize, which must be continued downwards, after the manner of a tight curtain, for two or three feet. Attached to the perch, at intervals of three feet, are spring swivels*, secured by little leashes of only a few inches long. The hawks should be hooded whilst their jesses are hooked on the swivels; but, when all is safe, the hoods may be removed one after the other, the falconer imme- diately retiring and rapidly closing the shutter. If utter darkness can be insured, the birds won’t bate off ; but, should they do so by any chance, they will climb up again by the curtain, provided the leashes are short ones. I confess, however, that I knew a case of a tiercel failing to regain his perch, and so dying. Still that happened, I believe, by daylight ; and I do not know the length of the leash. Certainly when hawks are first placed on the screen they should be frequently visited; but, in a short time, all anxiety may cease. Should any one feel nervous about the perches, he can use blocks, which are nearly as good, and perfectly safe, The screen, in fact, has gene- rally been considered as the resting-place for short- * Spring swivels are safe in darkness, for there is little or no bating. + The advantage of the screen is that it can be placed in a small room, whilst blocks require a large onc. “GORGE NIGHT.” 85 winged hawks —though the bow-perch is better — and I only recommend it, I repeat, for falcons, on the understanding that it is placed in perfect darkness. It will, perhaps, be thought a simple and unob- jectionable plan merely to take the hawks and blocks into the sanded room in boisterous weather, without troubling oneself about screen or shutter. If the room is well littered this may be done, as I have said; but they are disposed to be restless, and to bate very much. Like the famous starling, they “can’t get out,” and they want to get out because it is light. We have neither hooded our birds in the mew, the rustic shed, nor the open lawn; but there is a time when it is absolutely necessary that they should be hooded. I will mention it in a moment: let me describe feeding first. It is Saturday evening; give each hawk, at his block, as much rook or pigeon as he will eat, or else carry him, and while he is tug- ging at a bone feed him up to a full crop with very small pieces of fresh beef. In fact, Saturday night is “ gorge night,” and it is selected for a feast because a day must intervene between it and flying; and by giving a slight meal on Sunday morning, the birds are ready for the field on Monday. I do not mean to say that a hawk ought to be flown on all the six days; on the contrary, three or four days a week are quite enough. However, as a general rule, weather will confine your sport sufficiently, and therefore advantage ought to be taken of Saturday night. “On G3 86 FALCONRY. Sunday morning, then, give a slight meal about eleven o’clock; and on Monday, at twelve, “ hood up” for the field. It is now that the hood is neces- sary. If you do not intend to fly till three or four o'clock, give just two or three small mouthfuls of lean beef or bird, without the least particle of fea~ ther, at ten; this must be only a taste of breakfast. One meal a day is sufficient for peregrines, and it should be given in the morning ; but, when you have made up your mind not to fly a particular bird on the morrow, he may be indulged with a few pieces on the evening of to-day. Castings are also neces- sary: these are feathers or fur given with the skin, which, in order to make the hawk swallow them, may either be dipped in blood or offered with a small piece of flesh attached. Mice make excellent castings ; but the stomach may as well be taken out: some faleoners consider it dangerous to give them without this precaution. The birds, if allowed to pick and eat part of a pigeon, &c., will get some castings in the natural way; but these must not be altogether depended on, as half your hawks’ food is probably beef; The use of castings is to cleanse the crop or gorge; they should be looked for on the sand, and, if nicely rolled, and free from smell and undigested meat—and if the mutes are white, having a slight dark mark in the middle, but no red, yellow, or green—the bird is healthy. Do not fly the birds till they have cast. DRESSING THE MEAT. 87 Hawks must not have as much as they can eat, except on “gorge nights;” their condition may be known by feeling the breast. There are many ways of feeding them; but they should be often fed on the hand; this, in fact, is done almost of necessity, after the capture of any bird which is not game, by letting the hawk eat it on the way home —and a warm meal of this sort is a good thing occasionally. In game hawking it is an excellent plan to take beef, ready cut, and cut small, into the field, and, when the head of the quarry is demolished, the feeding may be finished with the meat, which can be carried in a clean tin box, or in a pouch strapped round the waist, and having a division for hoods. (By the way, a spare hood or two must not be forgotten.) ‘The daily meal, however, when it is a bird, may sometimes be given at the block ; not so when beef — for a hungry hawk, left to himself, will be apt to bolt that which he can tear so easily. Remove also, for fear of this same bolting, all intestines: wild hawks do this for themselves; but then they com- monly feed more deliberately than tame ones. Some falconers take the trouble to dress the meat in the following manner; and the plan is a good one :—A rook or pigeon is divested of all its feathers; if a pigeon, it is plucked ; if a rook, or any bird that will skin, it is skinned. The breast bone is taken out, the beak and feet are thrown away. The re- mainder is placed on a board and chopped, bones G4 88 FALCONRY. and all, with a strong chopper; a few drops of water are added, and the whole becomes a fine mass. If beef be used, a raw egg may be mixed with it, when it has been well chopped. Of course such food as this is invariably given while the bird is carried, 4. ¢. from the hand. Hawks not at work will do better with a whole pigeon or rook, or part of one, at the block, as the pulling is exercise. If beef is not quite fresh (though this is a misfortune), it can be dipped in cold water and squeezed dry; and the same thing may be done with fresh meat when it is desirable to reduce the hawk’s condition. A bath must be offered to eyesses in the early parti of almost every day in hot weather, and two or threé times a week in winter. Messrs. Benham and Froud sell baths: but you may make one out of the bottom of an old tub. It should be six or eight inches deep, and, for a falcon, nearly a yard in diameter. I would not place it before the compartments of the shed, as it would be very much in the way there. Let it be sunk in the ground nearly its own depth (a stationary block being close to it) in some retired place on the lawn, out of sight of the other birds; for hawks often bate a good deal if they observe one of their companions bathing when they have no bath themselves. As a sort of converse of this, you will take pains that a bad bather does see his fellows. in the water. You may do a good deal by call- ing to your aid the two powerful genii, imitation IMPING. 89 and jealousy. However, you may have several baths. Grease the jesses every week or ten days. And now a word or two about imping (mending a broken feather). Though a simple, it is a very important operation, and deserves the attention of every fal- coner. It is clear that a broken feather in the tail or wing, especially in the wing, is not only unsightly, but likely to interfere with the bird’s speed. There is no particular reason, however, why its loss should be regretted; for if the stump remain, it can be mended. The falconer should collect all the feathers he can of the species of hawk he uses. If any stupid fellow has shot a peregrine, perhaps he may be pre- vailed upon to part with the “vermin’s” skin; and when a hawk moults the falconer must save the tail and larger wing feathers. It is well, when it can be done, to keep the tail and wings entire—for instance, in the “vermin case,” and when a hawk dies. The best way of keeping feathers from the moth is to in- close them in brown paper bags. Imping is necessary, or at least desirable, even with a hawk just about to be put up to moult, which has an important feather broken off some distance from its point. In this case almost any feather will answer the purpose—which is only to afford support to the new and tender feathers whilst they are coming down. But when it is intended to fly the bird, great pains and neatness are necessary. Then any feather 90 FALCONRY. will not do; but one must be selected with regard to the sex of the bird requiring it, and to the number (first, second, or third, &c.) of that which is lost. The operation itself is performed in this manner :— hood the hawk, and get an assistant to hold him in such a manner that you can easily handle the broken feather. Take a sharp penknife (an unusually sharp one) and, having selected a firm pithy part at a reasonable distance from the quill, if the point of fracture will admit of your so doing, let the blade feel its way between the web to the shaft of the feather; now turn the edge towards you and cut cleanly and obliquely from quill to point, great care being taken not to injure the web on the side at which the knife comes out. The false feather—that which is to supply the place of the broken part— must be cut at an angle, through a thickness, and at a length, which exactly match the stump in the live bird. An imping-needle is now taken. It is made thus:—Take a piece of iron wire rather more than an inch long, file it in a triangular shape and to a thickness which will suit the feather you are mend- | ing, produce it to a point at each end, dip it in strong brine or in liquid glue, insert half into the false feather and the other half into the true feather, pressing firmly at the point of contact. The needle, of course, remains in the pith, and the feather is imped. If, as often happens, the original feather is broken without the end being Jost, no false feather IMPING. 91 may be necessary. Imp the bird with a piece of his own feather in this case. Frequently, however, the end of the feather is broken so near the point that the shaft is too thin for the needle. Then cut further down, and use the false feather. Should the fracture be so near the open quill that the imping- needle will not hold, recourse must be had to plug- ging. This is done by taking off the web from the shaft of any feather of the proper size, and inserting this shaft (perhaps for an inch) into the natural hollow quill, both plug and natural quill having been cut straight across, and the plug having been dipped in liquid glue. A turn or two of waxed thread makes matters still more secure. Then the artificial feather is imped on the plug with the needle in the usual way. Sometimes the artificial feather is cut straight across its hollow quill, instead of obliquely through the pith ; in this case the plug, well smeared with liquid glue, must be passed up it, as well as up the natural quill on the bird’s body. It is sometimes advisable to pass a common needle, with double thread, waxed, once through the plug and feathers— natural and artificial—tying the thread firmly on both sides. On no account must a feather be pulled out; if it be, ten to one it grows a weak and de- formed thing, and sometimes bleeds. I had a merlin, however, last year, which lost a tail feather through the weakness of starvation, brought on before she came to me, and this feather grew perfectly. The 92 FALCONRY. original one dropped out. Goshawks, too, seem sometimes, but I think rarely, to get feathers replaced healthily. Be careful. how you fly hawks near light and almost imperceptible wire fences. The prince Dhuleep Singh had a tiercel severely injured in the head and neck, not long ago, just as the hawk was making his last dash at a magpie, through a wire fence. The quarry’s life was saved, who chuckled in a most cunning and triumphant manner; that of the hawk nearly lost. There are a few men in this country, calling them- selves sportsmen, who would shoot a trained hawk, knowing it to be trained. I shall not designate them by any epithet. It could not, indeed, be too coarse for them to receive, but it might be unworthy of “ Pere- grine” to write. There is a vulgarity too despicable for censure ; and I am unwilling to disturb these gentlemenin their natural and unalienable possessions. A kind and honest man, however, may shoot your hawk innocently; and much may be done to guard against this accident. An advertisement put in a country paper; a notice on the blacksmiths’ shops in the neighbourhood and other public places; an occasional public “ meet” to fly pigeons, if your hawking establishment be a large one—all these will protect you with honest men: against rogues I fear you have no protection, You must wait with pa- tience, my brother, till the sport is better known. That it may be better known, or at least better A LOST HAWK. 93 appreciated, propagate the undoubted truth, that a good shot and game preserver, a good rider to hounds, a man who has the best greyhounds, or who shoots the most deer, who throws a fly to perfection, or who flies the best hawks, is not necessarily a sportsman. Your true sportsman is greater than any of these. He is a generous, liberal-hearted man, who loves sport not only for the bulk of its bag, but for itself; who loves it so well that he likes to see others enjoy it; who, while he abhors the slander which would dignify some spurious pastimes with its name, rejoices to find it in a new or a revived ‘garb, legitimate in birth; and is ready to welcome the lost stranger to all the rites of his hospitality. One more hint, and this chapter is done. A stray or lost hawk must be sought for immediately, and by two people at the least. In order that the assistance ‘of a second person may be efficient, the birds must have been made thoroughly acquainted with him. If you have no regular falconer or gamekeeper, a friend, groom, or gardener, should now and then fly the hawks to the lure, in your presence, and take them up, feeding them well; he had better not hood them perhaps, unless he is naturally expert at such matters; though it is most desirable that he should, if possible, be taught to do so nicely, While you seek in one direction for the stray bird, this assistant will seek in another, both of you having a live pigeon in pocket, fastened to a short creance, as well 94 FALCONRY. as the usual dead lure. A third person should ride to the farm and public houses at the distance of several miles, to engage the earliest notice, to be sent at once to you, should the hawk be seen. If the truant should be found after the absence of a week or two, he may be a little shy; for nature soon asserts herself when she has a chance. In this case it may be necessary either to peg a live pigeon under the bow-net (an instrument to be described in the next chapter), or to peg down the dead lure, should the bird settle within sight of it when thrown up (a practice more common with merlins than with peregrines), placing a noose of soft string over the meat, which you may pull over the bird’s feet and bell, if possible, at the distance of a dozen yards. If however the peregrine be seriously wild, a live pigeon should be thrown up, fastened to a long string which is pegged. Permit the hawk to seize and kill the pigeon; then gently walk up, till he flies off. Now peg the dead pigeon firmly to the ground by both wings, its breast being exposed ; draw out the long quill feathers, and stick them in the turf round their late owner, their ends pointing inwards. This arrangement will cause the noose, which you are about to place round them, to run up high and close to the legs of the hawk. Set it quickly and with care, retiring to some distance,. taking the end of the long string to which it is at- tached in your hand; the hawk will return; on his return, jerk the string, and you will have him. VOICES OF THE PAST. 95 Should you use the bow-net, you can hardly be ex- pected to rush frantically over miles of country with it in your hand; and it is a good plan, if the hawk has been watched to his roost, to go straight to that spot before dawn, taking the net, and so present him with a pigeon the moment he is disposed for break- fast. The father of one of our professional falconers,. having lost a hawk, sought it for hours in vain. At last the poor man, overcome with heat and fatigue, flung himself on the ground and fell asleep. The first object that met his eyes on opening them, was the falcon; she had found him. O faithful and de- voted “vermin,” I would that some men knew thy nature, and then their good hearts would prompt them to call thee by a better name! Wild rocky ground, though some miles from home, is a likely place to hold a lost peregrine. But if there is a ruined castle in the neighbourhood, go there at once. It is strange how fond our birds are of these relics of the olden time. The truth, I suppose, is that piles of stones, which resemble crags, attract them. But it isa stern and exacting truth. For my own part I will try to believe that the voices of other days, as they rustle in the ivy, and pass through the broken oriel, and go forth with the wind by the bastion-wall, still find ears that heed them. They call for the children of buried years; and the children hear the old music, even through the din‘ of cities and the hum of wheels ;—and the children come. 96 FALCONRY. CHAP. VII. THE HAGGARD PEREGRINE. — MRS. GLASSE. — HAWK-CATCHING IN HOLLAND. —- THE BOW-NET.— HOW TO COOK THE HARE. — THE BRAIL.—TRAINING (PROPERLY sO CALLED) OF PEREGRINES CON- CLUDED. THE peregrine falcon is termed a “ haggard” when it is taken wild in the adult plumage. During its first year the wild peregrine is called a “soar hawk” or a “red hawk ;” and, when caught during the migration, it is called a “ passage hawk.” All this will be found in the Chapter of Definitions ; but I mention it again for the sake of convenience. I am quite ashamed to allude to Mrs. Glasse, even in the most distant manner. She and that unhappy hare are so continually pushing themselves into notice—they so struggle into the Times, so parade themselves in the reviews, turn up so unexpectedly in heavy and light literature altogether—-that one really begins to think the moral and illustration (if they have such things to offer) no compensation for the perpetual plague of their presence. And yet “ here we are again ”—the old clown in the old pan- tomime! Name “silence,” and you break it.- Revile HAWK-CATCHING IN HOLLAND. 97 Mrs. Glasse, and lo! she is on the page before you: with one outstretched arm she directs you to the flying hare ; with the other she pathetically points to the currant jelly in the background. She conjures you to snatch the day—the moment; by all your hopes of happiness and of dinner, to take the initia- tory step with a decision and enthusiasm worthy of the cause. Well, Mrs. Glasse, I don’t remember to have sought your society before to-day, so please do me a good turn: tell these kind people for me that a haggard peregrine must be caught before it can be trained; and, when you have made that sage remark, we will consider both how to catch and how to train. First, how to catch, and also where to catch. The wild peregrine may be taken in the British Islands, and often is taken here, though not frequently for the purposes of falconry. A haggard tiercel was cap- tured the year before last in the south of England, and came into the possession of a friend of mine: several others were also taken. This bird was caught in a trap, and, strange to say, was entirely uninjured. A pole-trap is commonly used by gamekeepers for all hawks: it is circular in shape, and has no teeth. I shall say nothing more about it. If any of my readers wish for a haggard they may perhaps be able to procure one, either trained or un- trained, from some one of our professional falconers. The great heaths of Valkenswaard are resorted to by men— often cobblers, I believe— who pick up a good H 98 FALCONRY. deal of money by. taking peregrines on the passage, during the months of October and November. I should enjoy a day of this work, or sport it may be called, but should wish to be spared a very long apprenticeship, for you have to sit in a hole all day, to be nearly buried alive, while you pass the time, if you happen to be a cobbler, in alternately mending your neighbours’ shoes and looking through a little aperture in a very low wall which surrounds your dwelling, with the object of discovering wild pere- grines. That wall consists of pieces of turf, which you cut away before you begin to dig ; you are roofed in, too, with more turf, laid on a rude frame. There is, of -course, an ewit. I hope you admire your quarters, and that the “ event may justify the means,” &e. You are looking through your aperture on a © bow-net,” which is placed at some little distance from your new home. But what is a bow-net? Refer to “ Falconry in the British Isles;” but here is the passage. It “is a circular net of fine twine, and is made to bag sufficiently in the centre so as not to press upon the captured hawk. It is fastened to a round frame, made by binding two iron bars (five-sixteenths in size) into semicircles, and joining them by loops at their ends, which act as hinges. When put together and laid out flat, this framework should measure 3 feet 4 inches from hinge to hinge, and 4 feet 10 inches across the other way. When set, only half the net is allowed to move, viz. that THE ‘ BOW-NET.” 99 half to which the pull-line is to be attached; the other half is firmly pegged to the ground by means of three square-headed pegs, which hold better than the round-headed. The net is set by turning back the movable bow and pull-line, and after adjusting the net and covering the whole with either soil or pulled grass, or moss, it is baited with a pigeon.” You are supposed then to be looking in the direc- tion of such a net as this, which is spread out on one of the heaths of Valkenswaard. A pull-cord passes from it to your hand; but there are two other cords, or rather strings. They are thin, and one of them runs through a ring-peg placed in the ground in the centre of the bow-net. To the end of that string is attached a live pigeon, which is put into a small box that has a door through which the pigeon can be easily pulled to the net’s centre. The box is about eight yards from the net. (Hawks may be caught with this one live lure—no box being used.) But to make the affair even more attractive, another pigeon is fastened to a pole—to a pole, I fancy, for the convenience of a hawk that wishes to perch in order to reconnoitre and see how matters stand. This pigeon, however, has a piece of turf so placed for it as to afford a refuge on the approach of the passage- hawk. The second string of which I spoke is fas- tened to this lure, which can be stirred up when the falcon is seen. The hawk approaches: she makes for the pole-pigeon ; the pole-pigeon vanishes under H 2 100 FALCONRY. the turf. The disappointed and angry hawk rises in a short circle, the better to see where the little wretch has crept. But you, my friend, inside the hut—you have another notion; you pull the string, and out comes the other pigeon from the box. The hawk probably takes him between the box and the net as he is fluttering. Draw the struggling birds gently to the net’s centre, and with a jerk of the pull-line secure your prize. There are two little adjuncts to this. One isa butcher-bird. This fellow has done a good deal of private murder, on his own account, on the persons of little birds in thorn bushes; he has impaled them, or he has been slandered. But the best of him is— at least for practical purposes—that he has a con- science. .He sees the ghosts of his victims; they seem now to have great wings, immense talons, and crooked beaks. They pass, or would pass, but he shrieks in terror, and runs behind his turf. Down goes the half-mended shoe in the cellar hut; glim- mers the eye of the cobbler through the aperture ; snatch goes the string which rouses up the pole- pigeon, and so on to the end. In fact, the butcher- bird tells the hawk-catcher when a peregrine is within sight. The second help to the individual in the cellar is not always used ; but it happens sometimes that he has caught a hawk which is weakly, or at least not all he could wish it to be. ‘To the feet of this bird he ties a bundle of feathers, and fastens him to a string near the net. The hawk of course MRS. GLASSE. 101 tries to escape, but presents to his fellows the appear- ance, not of being in difficulties, but of being in (literally) very “high feather.” He seems to be struggling with some prey; and a chance passer-by through the air comes to see whether a spot which afforded a feast for one may not afford a feast for two. So the passer-by is caught. I don’t want to be sentimental; but are not men sometimes a little like birds? Of-course I remember all about the plucked fowl of the philosopher; but they are like, notwith- standing. , Now, Mrs. Glasse, we have caught our hare; let us cook her ! The peregrine, on being captured, is hooded with the rufter-hood (explained in the Chapter of Defini- tions), and sometimes put into the sock —a, piece of a cotton stocking drawn over the hawk’s head, (which is left exposed, except as far as the hood is concerned,) and fastened round his neck, the joints of the wings being allowed to project through slits. He is fastened round the body; and his feet, which pass through another slit, are wrapped up in cloth. It is not well, however, to leave him much more than half an hour in this state. Get him on a sort of turf block, fastened by his jesses to it, as soon as possible; but perhaps you may catch another hawk or two before you make him quite comfortable. The passage-hawk is nowat home. He has jesses, but scarcely any leash to the swivel, and is secured — HS 102 FALCONRY. the rufter-hood never having been taken off—to the block of turf; there are no angles, nothing by which he can injure his feathers. It is not necessary to commence at once a regular and systematic training. In fact, the first steps taken with a wild caught hawk are more in the direction of taming than training. For the first ten days or so he is removed from the block to the fist, only to be fed and carried, the hood remaining on the whole time. So far from there being any cruelty in keeping the bird hooded so long; you are kind in doing so; for, at this stage, he would do all in his power to dash himself to pieces were he to see broad daylight. Neither is he in perfect dark- ness, the rufter-hood being cut away rather more than is usual with the hood-proper, at the beak open- ing. It is not amiss, by the way, to change the hood (in a dark room) for one with a somewhat larger opening (on the same principle as cutting the “ seel- ing” —see Definitions) when the haggard has become a little reconciled to captivity. But this is antici- pating. Lift the haggard, then, on your fist, draw a piece of raw beef over his feet till he is provoked to peck at it; let it be very tender, so that he may take a small piece up. He will probably shake his head and flip it away. Try again; should he swallow oné bit, he is almost certain to swallow more: But it may be necessary to cram, for the power of digestion is lost by a too long abstinence. You can, however, pass a good twenty-four hours, even allowing for a TAMING. 103 fast before the hawk was captured, in perfect safety ; longer, I think. The dispositions of hawks vary; but we will say that at the end of ten days or a fortnight the hag- gard feeds eagerly through the hood; he, also, per- haps, just begins to recognise the whistle which you sound as you approach him. Now begin in earnest. Though in health, he has not been kept in high con- dition, and soon becomes “ sharp-set.” After a slight feed early in the morning, the bird must be carried. About two o’clock brail one wing, thus: take a strip of soft leather, about a foot long, as broad as a shoe- string, but three times the breadth in the middle; let it taper to points. Cut a slit down the middle, two or three inches in length. Place the joint of the hawk’s wing through this slit; bring one end of the brail under the wing, let it meet (outside) the one above; tie the ends; the joint isimmoveable; and the wing brailed. The picture in “ Blaine’s Encyclo- pedia” makes it appear that the brail goes round the body of the hawk; this is a mistake, and has led to mistakes.’ The brailing being completed, wet the bird thoroughly by squeezing a sponge full of water over him, it being held some height above him, so as to add a shock to the wetting. Go to a perfectly retired place, an out-house perhaps, remove the rufter-hood, immediately replacing it by the hood- proper, and continue the lésson of “making to the hood,” as explained in a previous chapter on eyesses. ‘104 FALCONRY. It is recommended that haggards and passage- hawks should be kept, while they are in training at any rate, upon the perch, in a dark room, the shutter of which is thrown open only at feeding times. They seem to fly to the hand for food better from the perch than from the block, and the reason, no doubt, is that you do not stand over them when they are called from the former resting-place. These birds are first taught to come to the fist in a house—7z.¢. under a roof of some sort, where it is impossible that any passing object can steal that attention which ought to be devoted seriously to dinner. The truth is, that all hawks come to the hand better in a room than out of doors; and I should not be quite satisfied that a hawk, say a sparrow-hawk, was perfectly broken to hand simply because I- had seen her fly to it in a room ; out-of-door practice is necessary, and is the second step; take care, however, not to make it the first, or you may lose time by frightening the bird at the outset. Haggards, when seriously taken in hand soon after their capture, are often rapidly tamed by being con- stantly kept awake for some days and nights: This can, of course, only be done by a relay of assistants to the falconer, as the bird must not be allowed to sleep for a minute. Such treatment, with a spare diet, soon conquers a rebellious, and even an obsti- nate spirit, and is, I think, to be recommended. It is not, however, absolutely necessary. Mr. Newcome TAMING. 105 saw some haggards trained in Holland which were only carried from two to nine p.m. When the haggard, or wild-caught hawk of any age, comes readily to the hand out of doors, it is time to offer him a live pigeon in the house. Strange to say, he may refuse it. This bird, which when wild perhaps struck down the heron, may be now abso- lutely cowed at a quarry he could kill in a few seconds. All will be right in the end: offer a live sparrow; let him kill several sparrows; then, having kept him sharp-set for a day or two, give another pigeon with its wing brailed. When a live pigeon is given, the hawk must be on the block, fastened by a long leash, and the string attached to the pigeon must go through a ring-peg, in order that the quarry may be brought up to a particular spot within the hawk’s reach. This is certainly the least agreeable part of training; but once done, it is done with. The next step is to fly the hawk, in a creance, at a brailed pigeon; then he may be trusted at large, when very sharp-set, at a pigeon, to which is fastened a long string, to be shortened as the hawk improves. And I am sorry to say that as far as pigeons are con- cerned for a flight, we must go no further, at least not for many months. A wild-caught hawk, however well broken, is sure to carry light quarry; hence the necessity of the string to the pigeon, the end of which is taken up by the falconer as he approaches the hawk. All that, however, is only preparation. Your 106 FALCONRY. haggard falcon is now prepared for being entered at heavy birds, such as the heron or herring-gull; though she will be a& wonderfully good hawk if she fly the latter quarry well. She can’t carry these: The tiercel may be at once entered to rooks, crows, and Norfolk plover. But time accomplishes much that skill alone is insufficient for ; and, when a year or so has passed, the haggards will perhaps “ wait on,” and show no disposition to carry. When this happens they can be flown at game. Until it happen, they must be ridden up to after an unsuccessful flight, and taken down to a live pigeon in a string; for they have no notion at first of returning to the falconer as eyesses do, and are sure, if sharp-set, to dash after the first bird they may see in the distance. As for the dead lure, to which nestlings are trained, it can only be engrafted on the affections of. haggards by very slow degrees, and the consequence is that wild- caught hawks are nearly always taken down with a live bird in a creance. Yet the passage-hawk is a noble bird, and, in experienced hands, more powerful than the eyess. I shall have something to show on that head when we come to “ heron hawking.” I have now entirely concluded the training, pro- perly so called, of the peregrine. The grammar is done with: let us try to enjoy the language. It has many beautiful passages, and perhaps a few that are instruc- tive. Au revoir. We shall look for grouse and par- tridges with the eyess and pointer in the next chapter. THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER. 107 CHAP. VIII. THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER. — BREAKFAST. — FLASKS. — MR. BROWN AND “PEREGRINE” SHOOT TILL LUNCHEON.— HAWKS GO TO THE FIELD. —CADGE.—A GROUSE 18 KILLED.— BROWN AND ROBINSON DISPORT THEMSELVES IN A MANNER WORTHY OF MA- KOLOLO. — MORE CAPTURES, —a FALSE POINT.— THE LADIES.— OUR BAG.—LECTURE.—THE TOYS. Ir is the first of September! I know it is without an almanac. The morning air carries something peculiar with it; not exactly a scent — nothing so gross as that — but a sweet, charming, invigorating freshness. Summer has just gone away, with her red flowers and her hot face, with her jewels and her glitter: and Autumn has grown tall enough and strong enough to put the sickle into the corn, bind up the sheaves, and carry home all the harvest. I can sleep now on the night of the 31st of August. There was a time when I lay awake then: had they been erecting a scaffold for my accommodation in the early morning, I could not have slept less: A few . grey hairs have a wondrously somniferous effect, at any rate when the exciting cause is only amusement. It is the first of September, I repeat; or, what amounts to the same thing for our present purpose, 108 FALCONRY. I insist upon your allowing that it is. My friend Brown is sitting opposite to me at my own table. He has just finished breakfast; so have I. Now, Brown does nothing by halves, and he does not make half a breakfast. It would be inhospitable to hin, however, were I to tell you, even if I knew, how many sardines he has swallowed, how many applica- tions he has made for ham, and how frequently he has referred to the marmalade. Enough that it is over: enough that rest follows labour. People differ as to what sort, and what amount, of breakfast a man ought to eat before a hard day’s work out of doors. I have known people refuse meat, and even eggs, altogether, on the ground that such things are too heavy, and also induce a fevered state of the blood. Some men dare not drink tea, others refuse coffee ; the majority, I think, allow that chocolate is innocent. Well, I know nothing of medicine, but I know this, that a man in good health is better, and better able to work, after a moderately substantial breakfast than after one composed only of toast and tea. You will be careful, however, if you take my advice, to avoid anything salt, for thirst will come without being coaxed to the moor side — yes even to the stubble. However, the most difficult thing to determine is, what one ought to drink. It is the fashion of the day to take into the field huge bottles of cold tea, and indeed to refrain altogether from any more stimulatiug fluid. I don’t like the fashion of BREAKFAST. 109 the day; but I like it better than the fashion of yesterday, 7. ¢. in other words, I would rather not have all tea, as we do now, nor all brandy and water, as they did then; but would rather have all the tea than all the brandy. On the white cloth before me—TI won’t tell you what is before Brown—is a large flask of tea and-a small flask of brandy-and-water. I intend to shoot till luncheon; and I know full well that if I should get very hot, or tumble over a hedge, or struggle for long through very high turnips, I should miss two or three shots unless J applied to that brandy. Still I shall not touch it wantonly; I shall not attack it wishout provocation ; I don’t want to make an enemy of it. * * * * * * Brown and IJ have had a nice four hours: we have bagged three and a half brace of grouse from points and fifteen brace of partridges between us. We first took the edge of the moor, and then beat stubble, grass, and some patches of potatoes, all which lie not very far from the heather, on open table-land. We have taken pretty good notes too of the whereabouts of the birds we left behind us, and, if they don’t move, shall be able to go almost straight to them after luncheon. We must be quick, by the way, for the hawks are hooded up, Jones and Robinson have arrived, and the ladies who join our meet will be in the field before an hour is gone. 110 FALCONRY. Robinson is a pupil of mine, and he suggests with deference that we should have had a better chance of good flights had we “unhooded” immediately at some partridges which I told him Brown and I left scat- tered in a little field of turnips. It was a pity, he thought, to have to go home for the hawks, and so let the birds get together again. “Not so, my dear Robinson,” said I, “and for these reasons: in the first place, as Dr. Johnson was not ashamed to say, ‘ Sir, I like to dine,’ I may perhaps venture to remark, ‘Sir, I like to lunch.’ Again, although the partridges might have been found separately, kicked up one by one and shot, yet they were in a small field, sur- rounded by thick and tall hedges, and would not have afforded the sort of flight IJ intend to show to-day. There are plenty in the open,” I added; “ we will go to them.” Robinson looked submissive, and offered me a cigar out of an immense case, somewhat after the manner of a penitent chief conciliating Dr. Livingstone with ivory and cattle: he evidently con- sidered that he owed me all the reparation in his power, We must make haste: the hawks are 100 yards on their way already,—I see the cadge by the gate. Look at that little idiot “ Erin,” how he tries to bate off !—I would not be the partridge before him in an open country, even if I had 300 yards’ start, for all that. Whilst the cadge is preceding us on our way to the field, let me describe it. It is a wooden frame, THE FIELD. 111 about four and a half feet long by two or three feet wide; it may be set down on its four short: legs, or carried by a man, who stands in the middle of it, by straps which pass across his shoulders. In fact, it is generally an affair of four light poles fastened so as to form an oblong, with straps and legs,— the poles serving as perches for the hooded hawks, and being padded. At each end two or three bars of wood are fastened, to prevent the birds bating off inside, and the only objection to which is that they sometimes interfere with the tails; but canvass would interfere more, to say nothing of its catching the mutes (of which, however, there are not many when birds are in flying order), and netting would be worse than bars. An excellent falconer has suggested the addi- tion of a piece of carpet fastened screen fashion, and has used such a cadge for unhooded merlins; pere- grines, however, must be hooded on any cadge. We are now in the field, with three eyess peregrines of the year on our “ cadge,” viz. two tiercels and a falcon: added to this I have one old favourite tiercel on my glove. “ Major,” the pointer, keeps to heel; but he is young, and it will be necessary to use the check-cord when we begin work. Let us try for grouse in this stubble: they come from the moor to it at all hours, and we were not near it this morning. We will fly against the wind, which is blowing gently from the heather: be quiet, and let “ Major” -hold up. The young dog quarters the ground like a young 112 FALCONRY. dog —there is a little too much gallop and romp, but the check-cord isa slight drag on him, and he will soon settle down to his work in style. Suddenly he. pitches nearly head-over-heels. Toho! “ By Jove i says Jones, “he’s got them.” “ He has,” I answer, « at least I think so, but I wont hood-off to a false point if I can help it; however, I’ve so often put them up from that very spot that Tl cast off the ‘Earl.’ As for you, Jones, instead of swearing by your heathen gods, do me the favour to canter after ‘Major,’ on that little pony of yours, the moment the flight begins, and if the ‘Earl’ kills, stop the dog, and peg him down near the birds; here’s a peg, and the cord is on him.” Whilst giving these directions, I unhook the swivel from the jesses of the old tiercel, take off the hood, and, as I raise my hand to hold the bird aloft, he starts from it. In a moment he recognises the dog, and knows well what that statue-like posi- tion means: nay, perhaps, he can detect the very movement of the jaw (as though the pointer were eating the scent), and see the saliva running from it. J, however, at 200 yards, can only see the dead staunch point. Walk up gently, my friends; let the hawk get his pitch. Pray do not hurry him; the grouse know what kind of fellow has got above them, and won’t rise till we make them. Well, that’s high enough, at any rate, and now his head is turned in towards the birds and towards the moor-—so, here goes. ‘ Hi, in! ‘Major, lad! into ’em, old boy !” A GROUSE IS KILLED. 113 And I set the example myself. Up get a brace of full grown young birds, as the dog plunges forward. “ Hoo-ha-ha-ha!” The practised hawk answers the shout by flying forwards, rising (if anything) as he does so, and then, in one terrible stoop, passing downwards through the air almost with the speed and the hum of a rifle-ball. It was a glorious stoop, but there must have been a clever shift too, for though he appeared to brush by, he has not killed, and not badly wounded; the quarry. Bounding, at the dis- tance of a few feet from the ground, which he almost seemed to touch, the good hawk rises again, not in rings, but in an oblique line, after the still flying grouse. Another stoop, from a pitch not so high as the last, at the same quarry again, which (evidently owing to its hurt) lags behind its neighbour; and down it goes, with a wing broken, and the skull nearly laid open (as we afterwards discovered) by that single blow. Look at Brown and Robinson! they “ Wo- whoop” like wild Indians, and dance on English stubble the dance of Africa—a polka worthy Makololo. Hasten, redoubted Jones, on thy mission, and leave these, thy brother chiefs, in their ridiculous ecstasy ! Jones did well: he caught hold of the check-cord and stopped the young dog, who, though too well broke “ to run in” on the struggling birds, conducted himself in so excited a manner, at the distance of fifteen paces from them, that a less experienced I 114 FALCONRY. hawk than the “Earl” might have been frightened from its quarry. All was right, however, when I got up. The old tiercel was fed from the head and neck of its victim, hooded and placed on the cadge. (He might have been “ fed up,” for we did not fly him again that day.) Take the falcon next; see what she will do —she has killed one bagged-grouse and three wild ones, since she was entered to them, and I know she is « sharp-set.” Look, another dead point! off with the young falcon! She’s well up now; flush the birds. «‘ Body of Bacchus!” said the enthusiastic but un- classical Jones, who, had he sworn at all, ought to have invoked Diana; “ Corpo di Bacco!” (as if the accusing angel did not understand Italian) repeated he, “ it’s a hare!” Tt wasindeedahare. ‘ Major” looked foolish and slunk back: I expect he had felt the check-collar for chasing not many weeks ago, The falcon wheeled off in disgust; and just as the whistle shrieked, and the lure took its first whirl, a wood-pigeon passed in the distance. ‘“ Au vol!” shouted Robinson, who had heard me lecture on heron-hawking. The hawk never thought of Robinson, but she saw the pigeon, and off she went, like the wind, over some rising ground. “ Whata nuisance !” exclaimed I, in humble vernacular; “ but ride, Jones—ride!” Well, we were an hour finding that hawk; she had killed the pigeon a mile or a mile and a half away, and, had it ss ee MORE CAPTURES. 115 not been that some rooks stopped to caw and circle about, we might have searched another hour. She had left the quarry, and was pretty well gorged when we found her, and had to be taken up with a live pigeon in a creance. Time gets on; we shall dine at half-past six, and little has been done. We must go lower down, and get a brace of partridges at any rate. There! some- body or something has put up that covey, or else they are passing out of the grass to feed on the stubbles. Mark them down! We shall have to fly down wind I fear, but, as there’s scarcely any to fly down, it won’t matter. There’s time or rather distance for one stoop, and I should think two stoops, before they can “ put in” at all. Speak quietly to the dog. “Have acare! steady, ‘Major!’” There he is again ! Now for “Erin” and “Comet,” the two young tiercels; Tl cast off both at once, and chance their taking separate birds, which they are nearly sure to do.” “ That’s right, Potterer,” said I, speaking to a stupid gamekeeper who came with one of my friends, and carried the cadge — “ that’s right, and done without a blunder. Now you have given me ‘Comet,’ give ‘Erin’ to Mr. Robinson.” So Robinson and I cast off our birds. They knew a little what the pointer meant, and seemed to regulate the position they took at their pitch with some reference to him — at least, I thought this was all, until, when the dog did not move, and we came up but slowly, little “Erin” proved 12 116 FALCONRY. to demonstration that he knew the dog’s business as well as his own, for he fell almost as if he had been a stone, on “ Major”’s back, or within a few yards of it, as much as to say, “ Get in, sir, get in,” and then regained his pitch before the dog— who seemed to be equally well up in the matter — flushed the par- tridges.* Down they came, “ Comet” and “ Erin,” almost side by side; but I was a little wrong in my calculations as to the number of stoops possible before the birds could reach cover. Whether the bird which “Comet” struck at the first stoop intended to “put in” the hedge or to pass over it, I could not see, though I suppose the former; however, he never reached the hedge alive, though he did reach it. The rush—not so much of wings as of the feathers of an arrow when it leaves a 701b. bow— the falling of a dark object from somewhere between us and the sky—something almost like the “thud” of a striking ball in the target—and the partridge falls dead on the hedge- top, his head cut away clean from the body.* That Brown and Robinson, nay Jones to boot, would have relieved their excited feelings by some such exhibition as that with which two of them had already favoured us is more than probable, had it not been for the cir- cumstance that the partridge pursued by “ Erin” “put in” not far from the spot where his companion fell, and so made it necessary that those gentlemen should * Founded on fact. THE LADIES. 117 exert their talents and energies to get him out again as quickly as possible. To this end they called a small but courageous spaniel to their aid —a little fellow who did not recognise thorns as thorns; and as the bird again took flight, it was brought down, at the first stoop, by the hawk, who, knowing what to expect, had “ waited on” above for that express purpose. And what has become of our fair friends all this time? Have we ungallantly forgotten them? If so, we have forgotten ourselves too. But no: they rode well—nay, they cheered well. ‘‘Comet” heard one clear silver sound when he gathered himself for the stoop, which proved to be the most brilliant of the season. Sir Edwin Landseer, look at that flight! dip your brush again in those undying colours, and give a picture to all time which it shall be as impos- sible for pen to rival as fully and sufficiently to praise ! Well, our bag was not large. It consisted of but one grouse, one wood-pigeon, the brace of partridges killed by the young tiercels near the hedge, and one other old cock-bird cut down afterwards by “ Erin.” “Comet” put in a single bird, but it was lost simply because neither dog nor man could put it out again. However, five kills out of six flights was not so bad, —at least we thought not. I was solicited to beguile the mile and a half that lay between us and home by a lecture on game- 13 118 FALCONRY. hawking ; but I had enough to do to answer all the questions which were put to me. “Did you not once say,” asked Robinson, “that a beginner should attempt to train but one peregrine, and that the bird should be a tiercel? Now, I have heard that when a hawk is lost the best plan to recover him is to fly another hawk of the same species (as a sort of call- bird),—the companion of the lost one, if possible.” “True,” said I, “the plan you mention is excellent; it is patent to all falconers; but you will remember that I recommended an ‘ only tiercel’ to none others than to those who had never taken a hawk in hand, and who knew nothing practically about the matter. For such I know my advice is good; and any one who really desires the spread of falconry should repeat it, and for this reason, that many would-be falconers have already been discouraged in limine, disappointed and disgusted altogether, simply because they have commenced with too many birds. They have been ‘too greedy,’ as a great falconer expressed it to me. Besides, a hawk, which is the constant companion of its master, is not very likely to be lost ; and, if it be lost, can probably be recovered by the lure and shout.” “ What is the best way of restoring feathers on a living bird, which have becomé bent, but which are not broken?” Hood the hawk, and dip the tail or wing (as the case may be) in hot water,” said I. “Do you think we could have good sport with the gun if, at the end of September with A LECTURE. 119 grouse, and later on in the season with partridges, — in short, when the birds became wild, — we were to fly a peregrine to the lure, allowing him to rake away pretty well, and the moment he was taken down and hooded beat for the game?” “You would have ex- cellent sport for a short time after the hawk was taken down, being able to walk perhaps even into the midst of grouse; but it would be prettier sport to put the bird on the wing again to the first point, and to kill right and left while he struck down a third.”* “Can you tell us an anecdote apropos of game- hawking?” “Here’s a fine stoop for you, at any rate,” said I. “Col. the Hon. E. G. Monkton saw a favourite falcon of the late Col. Bonham do this: the falcon was ‘ waiting on’ rather wide, there being a strong breeze at the time, when up sprang an old cock grouse, uttering his wild cry as he skimmed rapidly down wind. In an instant the falcon (which seemed, from its great pitch, hardly larger than a pin’s head) made a straightforward flight for a short distance, and then, with a pause as if to take aim, but which was almost imperceptible, came down like a meteor upon the grouse, which, from the power of the stroke and the speed at which it itself was flying, spun over and over in its long slanting fall, and was found deep in the heather. Col. Bonham had an excellent * John Anderson, one of the falconers employed by the ancient family of the Flemings, of Barochan Tower, Renfrewshire, frequently did this. He died in 1833, at the age of 84. 14 120 FALCONRY. little tiercel called ‘Little Jack, a famous bird for snipe; the Colonel used to go out with him before breakfast, and seldom bagged less than two or three. The same gentleman was flying ‘ The Countess’ (a fine eyess falcon) at grouse; she was ringing ata great pitch when the old setter made a steady point. The peregrine moved on over the dog; a grouse was sprung; but as the hawk gathered herself for a stoop — which, had it sped, would have carried death — @ raven, to the infinite surprise of all who looked on, intervened between the pursued and the pursuer, with the motive, however, not of intercepting de- struction, but of aiding it. She joined in the chase, but utterly spoiled the stoop of the falcon. The grouse ‘put in.’ ‘The Countess,’ disdaining the soci- ety of the vulgar nigger, rose loftily; and, as the quarry was again flushed, prepared once more for her stoop. Again the raven, convinced that she alone could bring matters to a satisfactory issue, and claiming the common rights of the air, started in pursuit, placing her black body between the high- born lady and the flying prize. This was too gross. ‘ The Countess’ came down like lightning on the back of the intruder; with one blow sent it off sick and croaking to the rocks; and then, as though she had but brushed a gnat from her path, regained her pitch for the third time, and killed the grouse at a single stoop. The Colonel, and his old falconer, M‘Cullock, declared it was the finest thing in falconry THE TOYS. 121 they had ever seen. And now,” said I, “one more, and we have done. Captain Salvin told me the following :—‘ I once had a splendid flight with “ Ver- beea,” an eyess falcon, at an old cock grouse, upon Grassington-moor, in Craven, near Skipton. The flight must have been about two miles. When I reached the spot where I expected to meet with the hawk, I found her panting and completely done, at some little distance from the grouse, which was wounded and exhausted, lying amongst a heap of its feathers. Neither could stir when I got up, and I shall never forget the pretty picture I thought it would have made. The grouse had fallen on a burn side, where the heather had given place to that beau- tiful short, soft, green grass which is made by the browsing of sheep and geese. Then, as a back ground, there was a sparkling stream, with rock, fringed with fern and purple heather,’” &c. “Thank you, ‘ Peregrine,” said the ladies, and Brown, Jones, and Robinson immediately said “Thank you.” * * # * * Put up Brown, Jones, and Robinson in their oval- shaped box, made out of a great: shaving that does not meet at all neatly at one side, and which is bound with another shaving, red, and thinner. They are only puppets, you know. I never knewthem. Mind you don’t break their legs off, or their heads, or spoil the wire that pulled them. They were very cheap +22 FALCONRY. and I borrowed them from somebody else; but they have lightened our toil a little— children that we are!— and I would not hurt them. We all find our playthings strewed about the serious roads of life; they get full of dust sometimes, but (thank God) we can shake it out again. JI, for one, like to see them there; they do good and no harm; they may some- times instruct, always amuse, us. Yes! I think we must put them all up, very carefully, into the play- cupboard for another day. ESSAY ON “ SPORT.” 123 CHAP. IX. AN ESSAY ON “ SPORT.”-—— MAGPIE-HAWKING.—NO DOGS.—HUNTING WHIPS.—EYESS TIERCELS TO BE USED.—THE SORT OF COUNTRY NECESSARY. — A FAIR SPRINKLING OF MAGPIES BETTER THAN A GREAT QUANTITY. — THE SORT OF WEATHER, — THE FALCONER AND HIs “FIELD.” —THE MAGPIE.— THE FLIGHT.—THE “TAIL.” — — MAGPIE-HAWKING IN IRELAND. — ROOK-HAWKING. — BAGGED BIRDS. PEoPLE agree in their notions of what sport is, so far as this, — that they confess certain elements are necessary to its existence, and that, if any of these fail —these essential parts —the whole is more or less a failure. A fair prospect of success, mingled with some uncertainty in regard to the exact time when we shall be successful; an occasional difficulty, together with skill, tact, and perhaps bodily strength to overcome it; an occasional stroke of good fortune, with ability to make the most of it— all these are, of necessity, allowed places in that which is called « sport.” Still, I question if we have a very accurate impres- sion of what it really is. We are inclined to see it only in its instruments. This man cannot under- 124 FALCONRY. stand it in connexion with any creature but a fox; that man weds it to a partridge. I grant, of course, that the immediate object of pursuit, together with the implements of chase, are necessary to the existence of sport; but they are necessary only in the manner — considerable, it is true — that the body is necessary to the mind, or the fingers of a clock to the main-spring. Sport is not wholly material. It has material agents, but it is above and before them all. Do you imagine that, because it sits for awhile on the falcon’s wing, or bounds side by side with your greyhound, or speaks to you in the music of the pack, or touches the water when the eddy circles away, that it is the child of these? It is not the child of these. Its parentage is as high as your own; its spirit was born with your life, and will live in any house you may choose for its tenement. Is music material? is poetry? I have not confused the love of sport with the reality. For imagine a man born amongst the objects of the chase: let his chief companions be old women, or those who, until they joined him, have spent their existence amongst streets; let him be without tuition, and do you not think that he, or his offspring, probably himself, will find a way to hunting? Aye, marry! will they, as sure as the newly-fledged falcon makes her first stoop. Such aman had never seen sport; he did not meet her on the wold, or in the ESSAY ON “ SPORT.” 125 forest: there indeed was her food and raiment; but she first sprang from his side— from himself, and came back to him clothed and armed,— the Diana of his dreams. Now, the fair maiden may clothe herself as she lists; in other words, you, sir, may choose her dress for her, because she is sure to like it. That which I will call the wmmediate object may be a fox, a pheasant, or a fish. The value of that object, whatever it be, is not necessarily intrinsic, — it is adventitious. This may be made clear at once by dividing sports into two classes. In one class we will place (at any rate) shooting and fishing. In these a great deal depends upon the rarity and in- trinsic value of the creature taken: thus a woodcock is better than a snipe; a trout than a chub; and the “ sport” is found to be very much in proportion to the value (as the term is commonly employed) of the bird or fish. But in what we emphatically call “the chase”—such as hunting and hawking—the value of the “immediate object,” though great, does not arise from its importance when caught, but from the excitement and amusement which it affords in the catching. The fox and fox-hunting, so familiar to every one, illustrate this remark at once (the animal chased being, as a possession, absurdly out of propor- tion to the pains taken in his capture); and the simple mention of them renders other comment un- necessary. 126 FALCONRY. It is the incidents of the chase, then, that are amusing and absorbing; these follow nobly in the train of the “immediate object ;” they are created by it, whilst they are superior to it. Clearly the game must be valuable ; yet the value need not belong to the possession, but to the pursuit. Ihave thought it worth while to analyse a little our notions and feelings on the subject of sport; be- cause I am about to offer my readers some remarks on the method of taking birds (with peregrines) which are treated, with reason, as vermin, or consi- dered as worthless altogether, and can therefore be valuable to the sportsman only as they afford him amusement in pursuing them. This chapter is on magpie-hawking and rook-hawking. However amus- ing the magpie may be when alive and in captivity, he is worthless when dead; and falconers are, I fancy, the only sportsmen who care to pursue the rook and carrion crow, except, indeed, that the pea-rifle does some execution on the former at the beginning of every May. What I have to say practically upon this subject will be written, in great part, from notes prepared by my coadjutor, who has brought magpie- hawking (introduced, or at least greatly improved, by Sir John Seabright) to what I think may fairly be called perfection. Let us take magpie-hawking first 3—rook-hawking, indeed, is almost learned from the same lesson. For this sport a “field” is necessary: it is, in fact, the MAGPIE-HAWKING. 127 fox-hunting of falconry. The quarry is the most artful of all birds which we chase; and, though his speed is insignificant compared with that of some others, the cleverness with which he shifts to avoid the stoop, the brain which he bears, and the extra- ordinary adaptation of his bodily powers to elude capture in anything like cover, make it necessary that the hawks should be assisted by several experienced hands. In fact, you must have a “meet.” That “meet” must be very devoted and very obedient.* One thing it must not do upon any account whatever, —it must not bring dogs. If it forget this prohibi- tion, even in the case of one of its members, the lives of your hawks will be in danger. Imagine a favour- ite tiercel, after a long and fine flight, just breaking the quarry’s neck,—a tiercel that your wife, children, friends, love — the hawking community perhaps know — his name a household word among all,— imagine this fellow, docile as a dog himself, and never caring for one, run into and killed by some yelping brute! A pleasant fancy truly! “Pray you avoid ” a possibility of the reality. But you must have hunting whips. When the magpie has taken to cover, the smart crack of a whip is almost certain to send him out again. You know the effect which such a sound has on a hare in “form;” but with the magpie there is really a ne- * Circulars should be distributed in the neighbourhood with these directions ; this plan has been tried, and found excellent. 128 FALCONRY. cessity for it. Surely, if not a veritable witch, mag must imprison the spirit of some ancient caitiff who has never obeyed but at the threat of chastisement. To constitute a perfect “ field” there should be horse- men and footmen—the former using their whips, the latter their sticks and staves, to drive the magpie from his place of shelter, such as a hedge or clump of trees, when he has been “ put in” by the hawks. It is not at all meant here that a falconer, with a cast of peregrines, and a friend or two (or servant or two) to help him, cannot take magpies in a tolerably open country; although, if he have never yet tried the sport, he will probably find it more difficult than he imagines it to be; but I am simply saying how the thing is to be done if it be done in perfection. In that case there certainly should be a proper “meet” —a pic-nic “meet,” if you will. Ladies who like to ride over a little fence, and yet do not care to follow the hounds, should be on horseback; men who like riding, who like running, should be there; labourers, . with a couple of hours or more of holiday, should be there as beaters; and if the “ meet” be in Ireland (so says my friend from whose notes I am now writing, and who looks back with gratification—nay, perhaps I may venture to say for him—with gratitude, to the hospitality which he received in that country), there is sure to be as excellent a luncheon and as hearty a welcome as a man need eat or need shake hands upon. Falcons are so likely to start after rooks when the MAGPIE-HAWKING. 129 magpie has “ put in,” and thus been lost to the hawks for a time, that tiercels ought to be used. Passage- hawks would not “ wait on” well—a matter in which magpie-hawks should be perfect — and would pro- bably “carry;” for these reasons, and perhaps also from the greater facility in procuring the young birds, magpies are almost invariably flown with eyesses. A single tiercel, well supported by the “field,” will take the quarry in time; but it is much better to fly-a cast at him, half the beauty of the flight consisting in the manner in which the assail- ants aid each other, one immediately taking up the stoop which his friend has missed. As for the sort of country necessary for the sport, it must be free from woods; not from the hedges of large enclosures, nor from occasional bushes, nor even from very small plantations, but from “ woods,” as one generally uses the term. Indeed, a country may be too open; a magpie, when there is no shelter near him, will take wing on the first appearance of the hawking party, and, if he is viewed at all, will be too far off for a flight. Choose, therefore, some- thing like the following for the ground :— Grass, with leapable hedges; here and there a thorn bush, either in the hedge itself or in the large open fields ; and, of course, there will be, whether you like it or not, an occasional small tree. With these advantages a falconer and four assistants may have fine sport with a cast of tiercels, but the more the merrier, K 130 _ FALCONRY. and if the “ cheer” may be spoken of as represented by the number of quarry killed, it will probably con- tradict the proverb, and not be “better” with the “ fewer.” A fair sprinkling of magpies is better than a great quantity of them; the reason is, that if they be too plentiful, the hawks in pursuit are apt to fly at » “check,” %. ¢ when the quarry has “ put in,” the tiercels “ waiting on” above him are almost sure to fly a fresh magpie, should it pass before the legi- timate bird is driven out. It is clear that in doing so they waste their own strength without the chance of being able to fatigue their opponents, who are compelled only to a labour which, like the breaking of separate sticks, is easy when it is divided. In this country hawks cannot be depended upon when the day is very bright and the sky azure; in such weather they like the luxury of a soar. It is not difficult then to conceive that in such a sport as magpie-hawking, when a good deal of “ waiting on,” and consequently patience, is required of them, they should sometimes be tempted to leave it for the amusement which, notwithstanding their hunger, nature dictates — just as you, my friend, who like luncheon and fly-fishing, would forego both, in a broiling day, for one swim of ten minutes in the deep and crystal water. And as perfect calm, ac- companied by great heat and brightness, is detri- mental to the sport, so is a high cold wind. The THE FALCONER AND HIS “ FIELD.” 131 medium is right here, and perhaps anywhere; seek it, at least, here. Let us suppose that a good falconer, with a cast or two of tiercels, and a “field” of his friends and neighbours — ladies, gentlemen, yeoman, and beaters — starts for half a day’s magpie-hawking. It is a neighbourhood that affords the quarry he seeks; and one of a few scattered trees in the distance seems likely to hold it. A small but good glass is an excellent help now; direct it to the tops of the trees. There is Mr. Mag on the very topmost bough — nay, on the highest twig of all, rocking himself about in an apparently free-and-easy, care-for-nobody, Ame- rican sort of manner, but, in reality, watching the little company with a most anxious gaze, and not a few. nervous misgivings at heart. See how he telegraphs with his tail, in jerks whose rapidity is increasing, that all is well; while, contradicting their antipodes, his clever head is turned more quickly, and his sharp eye looks out for the refuge which he is on the point,of seeking. Poor maggy! had you balanced yourself on that bough before “ Highland Laddie” was blinded, I had counted you but dead; as it is, I pity you—nay, could I ride the air, I think you would be helped in your last shift, just when they come spinning past you, just as you. drop one feather to their touch and expect to drop yourself when the next stoop comes. But some one has seen you, and has mentioned K 2 132 FALCONRY. the fact of your presence to the falconer. He is even now hurriedly telling his “field” to place them- selves between you and that little wood in your rear, so that, should you attempt to make for it, you may be intercepted. Had you been am the wood (you may be interested in knowing this), the side down wind, especially if most open, would have been left clear for your exit, while the beaters went in opposite. The object in any case is to get you into the “open” as quickly as possible. I perceive that you are there already; and, indeed, that a cast of tiercels has been cast off, and is in hot pursuit of you. Do you wear the half-mourning for one of your brothers slain long ago at a great stoop? or is it put on quaintly and shrewdly on account of the doubtful issue of the present struggle, and in semi-anticipation of it? They are experienced hawks that are after you, and, had one been inferior to the other, you would have had the best first. As it is, fly! but, above all, as you cannot fly well, dodge. Pass down a hedge close to its side; just skim the ground; they dare not stoop hard then, lest they should dash them- selves against it; and, if you are pressed into the open, shift backwards as they stoop. Farewell! There are two or three methods of managing a flight. Take, for instance, the case where the coun- try is pretty open, good for riding over, and most of the party are mounted; then a straight flight across country is most desirable. To secure it the magpie THE FLIGHT. 133 must not be headed, but allowed to make “ his point,” which, like that of the fox, will be straight to the nearest wood or cover—his stronghold. Or you may, under other circumstances, adopt a plan exactly opposite to this: it is common, and sometimes abso- lutely necessary. When cover is close by, the quarry must be headed at once and driven from it. He will take short flights near the ground, and from bush to bush; but his favourite course is along a hedgerow. As the hawks cannot strike him in such situations, the great object of the falconer and his field must be to drive him across the open country ; at any rate, to press him over pretty good-sized enclosures, if there are any, so that the tiercels may get the chance of a stoop or two. Suppose the magpie has “ put in” a hedge; let the horsemen leap it, or get on the other side by some means as fast as they can; the footmen must remain where they are. In this manner a circle is made, only prevented from uniting at two points by the hedge, which the ends of the semicircles, how- ever, must touch, the magpie being in the middle. Let: each party now rapidly approach the other, and with the crack of whips, with sticks, and voices, com- pel the magpie to fly free of cover altogether. As the tiercels come down, one after another, he “ shifts his flight,” 2. e. turns quickly in the air, thus throw- ing the hawks out, and giving himself the opportunity of regaining cover. From his new shelter he must be driven as before, and that as quickly as possible, K 3 134 FALCONRY. for (as the field will do well to remember) the hawks are spending their strength on the wing, while he, cunning fellow, is creeping through bushes and hedges; perhaps, as my notes assure us, “ concocting some sly dodge to do his enemies.” A flight, then, may be confined to some few fields, or it may be a straight-forward flight of a mile, or even possibly two miles; the latter lasting sometimes for more than half an hour. Occasionally it will be found that the magpie gains a plantation, notwith- standing every effort to prevent him. Through this he must be driven, as sharply as possible, by the cracks of whips and by beaters; but should he bury himself in a large wood, he is as safe as a fox gone to ground where there are no spades and no terriers, The “kill” is, of course, proclaimed by “ whoo- whoop,” at which cry all should fall back, in order that the falconer may secure the hawks quietly: believe me he will be very angry if any one approach him too nearly at this period, The first person up at the death may claim the equivalent and counter- part of “the brush,” viz. “the tail.” It makes a pretty trophy to wear in the cap; and, supposing it unusually fine, and from a cock bird, it can, be formed into a very nice hand screen. Magpies are not always to be found in sufficient quantities in England to justify a stud of magpie- hawks; but they abound in many parts of Ireland; and that country, being generally free from wood, is THE MAGPIE. 135 well adapted to the sport. Captain Salvin made a hawking tour in Ireland in the autumn of 1857, having been invited there by a friend in Tipperary. John Barr (since falconer to the Prince Dhuleep Singh) was then his falconer. The tour, which lasted about four months, embraced the counties of Tippe- rary, Cork, and Kildare. It was very successful. The “ meets” were published in the papers, and circulars were sent out, so that a “ field” might be secured. The best hawks were “ Assegai,” “ Azrael,” and “ Hydra” (falcons), with which sixty-eight rooks and a Royston crow were killed; and “ The O’Donohue” and “ Dhuleep Sing” (the latter hawk brother to the famous “ Bishop”), which took the astonishing num- ber of 184 magpies. No two tiercels ever varied in their method of killing more than these, though both, I need hardly say, were first-rate hawks. “ The O’Donohue” always killed by a splendid stoop, while “ Dhuleep Singh,” though he could stoop well enough, preferred the more certain, but less grand, style of clutching the quarry the moment it began to flag. The average of each day’s sport was about two or three rooks and four or five magpies; but on one occasion (the last day in Tipperary), the bird “ Dhu- leep Singh” took eight magpies himself! I mention all this simply as a matter of encouragement. It shows what can, be done. If you want to fly magpies, keep the hawks to that particular quarry. A good magpie-hawk may, how- K4 136 FALCONRY. ever, be converted into a game-hawk by being taken. from magpies and entered at once at partridges, or other suitable quarry. But the flight, which is the subject before us, gives a tiercel confidence, tact, courage, and steadiness ; and when he has been well accustomed to it through the winter, he may almost always be entered to rooks in the spring. Tiercels, not being so strong as falcons, give great interest to a rook flight. A bird that is really good at magpies must have great tact and determination. Captain Salvin saw a favourite tiercel, after a hard flight, drive a magpie into a hole in a park wall; there was a good “ field” well up at the time, and they had drawn round the spot. The little hawk lit near the hole, dragged out the magpie, and killed him, amidst their cheers, I could write a chapter on rook and crow-hawking, I dare say, but it would hardly be fair to my readers to do so; for, although there might be a slight differ- ence in detail from the sport I have just described, yet the leading distinctions can be stated in a few words, and the characters of the flights are too much alike to justify their being treated separately. It is enough, perhaps, to say, that in rook-hawking the country canaot be too open ; that rooks are commonly flown with falcons, not with tiercels ; that either eyesses or passage-hawks may be used; and that, if a tree should unhappily be in the way, and the rook takes to it, the crack of a whip will not drive him ROOK AND CROW-HAWKING. 137 out, but stones and sticks, or some such strong remedies must be employed. This sport being only, or generally, followed in a perfectly open country, often admits of a good gallop; and if the quarry “takes the air” (or “rings” ), which is usually the case more or less, we get a sort of approximation to heron-hawking itself. A friend of mine once had a famous rook-hawk —a falcon; she enjoyed getting amongst a flock; for, not content with one stoop or one prize, she passed several times through the whole, dealing death at each blow, and seldom descended until several victims were beneath her. Hawks may be entered to magpies and rooks by giving them winged birds, or, better than nothing, even dead birds, in the first instance; but it is well to procure, if possible, a bagged quarry that can fly. This may be done with traps, or by rearing young birds taken from the nest. The great objection to the latter plan is that the nestlings make friends with you, their distinct characters and dispositions come out, and you know the little birds all by heart ; you cannot find in that heart to throw them to the hawks: they have ceased to be a mass of magpies, and have become individual intelligences. You cannot select one, say good bye— and then? Or, if you can, you ought to be thrown to a wild beast yourself; and I should like to train him. 138 FALCONRY. CHAP. X. THE “ CHIVALRY” OF FALCONRY HAS, IN A MEASURE, SPOILED ITS PRACTICE. — HERON-HAWKING (A LESSON). — HERON-HAWKING (A NARRATIVE). Fatconry, notwithstanding its partial revival at the present time — a revival which I have some hopes may yet increase —is, as has been said before in this work, still little known to the majority of sports- men, and utterly strange to nearly all others. We find an occasional mention of it, but only as an ancient romance, in those wonderful books which, coming thick and fast from Abbotsford, bound half the modern world in a spell such ag was never felt since the days of William Shakspeare. It would have been strange indeed had the magic which brought before us, just as they existed, every custom and character, every habit and manner of the past, leaving them for ever in our memories, failed to call up the great sport of chivalry itself. And yet I verily believe that the pen which taught us to cast off our merlin at a wood- cock with Ann of Geierstein, or whistle the falcon to our hand with Ellen Douglas, spoilt the modern practice of the sport of falconry by the very charm THE “ CHIVALRY” OF FALCONRY. 139 with which it invested it. To Walter Scott, or at least to his readers, Falconry was but one ideal being in along and sparkling pageant. She took her place only in the Past; by the arrow that split the willow- wand at one hundred paces — by the plumed helmet with the lady’s glove clasped in it—and by the tall lance; with the ringing of beakers at the feast, with the “St. George for Merrie England,” and the solitary Christian warrior who met the lonely Saracen on the plains of Palestine. “The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust ; Their souls are with the saints, we trust.” I hope and believe they are with the saints: they are gone at least, but they have not taken everything with them. Falconry is of course a mere nothing, after all. It is only a sport. I never said it was more. At any rate it need not be considered only a piece of the ancient pageant; but something better than the ancient or the modern perhaps. Things of the kind are in full force. They are useful, though not as matters of bread and cheese. Then let them remain; and don’t be angry with me because I want to add or revive another ! I know what you, my lady, who have just thrown down that gilded volume, and are reclining there so gracefully —I know what you imagine falconry to be, 140 FALCONRY. —the strange, startling, beautiful fairy-tale of sport; the delicate but haughty creature that, in the middle ages, rode through Europe with a gauntlet on her little left hand, with a train of velvet robes, and plumed caps and buff jerkins behind her ; the heroine who gave place only to the hero; she whose silver voice was always heard until the meeting of mace and morion, the shouting of men-at-arms, drowned it in their din. Yes, my lady, you are romantic, and falconry has taken its colour from that of your mind. And you tell us what you consider it, Sir Exquisite — you who, knowing about as much of field sports as the butterfly whose plumage and habit you so industriously copy; you who, with these incapacities, amongst a host of others about you, had the gross audacity to review * it, and, with your puny pen, to try to transfer to a subject, in which you could have no part or lot whatever, the dulness and’ frivolity that are so conspicuously your own! Tam a practical man, and I am about to give you, my kind readers, a page or two of heron-hawking, not as it appeared in the “olden time,” but as it existed a very few years indeed ago; as it existed, to say the truth, among the members of the famous Loo Club in Holland. The paper which I shall present was not written by myself; it was procured by Captain Salvin, who did not write it, but received it from the writer, an eye-witness of what it de- * Not this work, Sir E.,—that has to come. . HERON-HAWKING. 141 scribes. It is the production of a gentleman whose name I have no direct permission to give; but I may venture to say that he is an excellent falconer himself, and a very near relative of one to whom we all look up—the once fortunate owner of the wonderful hawks, “De Ruyter” and “Sultan.” I shall transcribe it almost verbatim. However, with no wish, I am sure, to tantalize my friends, but rather with the hope that I may enable some of them the better to understand and appreciate it, I shall offer a very few lines on the rudi- ments of the branch of the sport which it describes. Those who have seen a cast of merlins fly a good ringing lark, have seen a portion of heron-hawking in miniature; that is, they have seen a quarry at- tempt to outstrip his pursuers by rising into the skies. One great element in heron-hawking, how- ever, was omitted; the lark was very small and unarmed, whereas the heron is larger than the hawks, has formidable claws, and, above all, a most frightful dagger of a beak. With this he stabs; but the great danger is not as generally supposed, and as Sir Walter Scott represented, from a thrust in the air, but on the ground, when the hawks, having let go to save themselves from the shock of the fall, “make in” to kill the quarry.* * In the spring of 1854 Mr. Newcome took several herons with “Verbea” and “ Vengeance,” two excellent eyess falcons which had been flown at hack by Captain Salvin, at Kilnsey, in Craven, York- 142 FALCONRY. Herons (though Mr. Newcome has taken them with eyesses) are generally flown with passage fal- cons; birds which, being stronger than eyesses, are valuable in a sport in which “ waiting on” is not required, and “carrying” is impossible. The heron, which might, no doubt, be killed ’as it rose heavily from a pool or brook by a female goshawk, suppos- ing that the falconer stalked it to within thirty yards or 80, is, when once high on the wing, a bird to try the speed of our best falcons, Neither indeed will every falcon venture at first to attack this quarry at all, even though the heron* is captured and offered to her. Rooks are the preliminary game for heron-hawks ; but the real « entering ” is occasionally along and unpleasant process, a cock the colour of a heron being sometimes commenced with ; also the beak of the heron (employed next) being guarded by a piece of hollow cane or -elder, into which it is thrust, and raw beef fastened to its back. The fastened meat, however, is not always necessary. When the hawk will fly bagged herons well she may be trusted, together with an experienced bird, at wild ones, but on the first trial pains must be taken to give her every advantage, and the falconer must not spare his horse, but take care to be up exactly, shire: and this is the first recorded instance of herons killed by nestlings. It has been done by another gentleman this year. * Herons are caught for this purpose on their nests, by a noose drawn over their long legs, HERON-HAWKING. 143 or as nearly as possible at the kill, in order to assist the falcons. Herons, as is generally known, build on high trees, and the place of their assemblage is called an heronry. In the spring, they pass to and from this place to fish, much after the manner of rooks when in quest of their worms and grubs, only that herons commonly fly higher, farther, and, as their favourite water takes them in a particular direction, more entirely over the same ground than rooks do. It is during these journeys, which are called their “ passage,” that falconers take them. The country must be quite open. The falconers place themselves down wind of the heronry, and look out for the re- turning birds: these, being weighted with the fish and frogs they have captured, are called “ heavy,” and are generally flown at; although, as will be pre- sently seen, some hawks are equal to a “ light one.” Heron-hawking has been practised even compara- tively of late years in this country, both at bagged and wild herons; but owing to the draining of the land, many a good “ passage” has been spoilt; one, I fear, in Norfolk. Just now it is almost, if not quite, a dead letter here. Yorkshire, too, was great once ; but Clifford and Bramham Moor, of Colonel Thorn- ton’s time, are all enclosed: in fact, everywhere 1s either enclosed or drained — so there’s an end on’t. Now for the narrative :— * Loo, twelve o’clock, p.m. Scrnz, a bed-room at Mother Camphoo’s Hotel. Falconer enters : —‘ Not 144 FALCONRY. up, sir? Twelve o’clock. Wind 8.W.; rain in the night, and cloudy now. Just a little wind. We must go to the Wesen field.’ “ A voice from the bed.—*‘ Open the window! What a fine day for hawking! Have all the hawks out! Tell them to get breakfast ready directly; some fish “* bots,” which they know how to cook so well.’ “ This speaker, and the rest of the members of the club, had dined at the palace yesterday, and managed, somehow or other, to get home late. However, they slept late, and arousing themselves at the falconer’s call, got to the field by half-past five. The falconers had been there with the hawks an hour or more, but no heron had passed—it was too hot. However, about six o’clock one was a la voléed, coming over very high. The falconers looked glum and undecided. “ Sultan” and “ De Ruyter” were ready on hand. The fortunate owner of these hawks cries out, ‘ Will you have a shy, James, or shall I? The falconer ad- dressed thinks it rather too high for his young hawks. “ Well, then, here goes,’ says the former; and having let the heron get a little past, off go the hoods. For a moment one hawk looks up, and is cast off; the other a moment or two afterwards. They both see him; now for a flight! The heron was about 250 yards high, and perhaps a quarter of a mile wide. The hawks had gone up about a quarter of the way before the heron saw them in hot pursuit. ‘Now he sees them !’ is exclaimed; and the riders rattle their HERON-HAWKING. 145 horses as hard as they can, over deep sand-hills, down wind. The heron, in the meanwhile, vomits up his fish to lighten himself, and begins ringing up down wind. It is a curious thing to see the different manceuvres of the birds. With his large wings, the heron can mount very fair, and has a far better chance of beating off the hawks than if he flew straight forward. This he knows full well by instinct, and puts on accordingly all sail for the upper regions, generally in short rings. Hawks make larger rings as a general rule, if, like these, they are good ones. Those have but a bad chance with a good heron if they adopt the same tactics that he does in mount- ing. This the two old hawks know full well. So far they have been pretty near together, but, seeing the prey beginning to mount, they separate, each their own way, now taking a long turn down wind, and then breasting the wind again. ‘De Ruyter’ makes the best rings, and after having gone a mile, there is a shout —‘ Now “De Ruyter” is above him! and the hawk is seen poising herself for a stoop; down she comes, with closed wings, like a bullet, and hits the heron; it is too high to see where, but the scream the quarry givesistremendous. Hurrah! there’s a stoop for you! Both hawk and heron have descended some yards; the former, from the impetus of her stoop, much beneath the heron, but she shoots up again to a level. In fact, it was a perfect stoop. Though so near the heron she does not attempt a little stoop, but again L 146 FALCONRY. heads the wind, so that the heron appears to be fly- ing the hawk. ‘Sultan’ is now above both, and makes her stoop, but not so good as her partner’s. However she makes two quickly, and is within an ace of catch- ing; but the good heron will not give an inch, and ‘Sultan’ will have to make another ring for another stoop. But where is ‘De Ruyter’ all this time? She has made a long ring, and is now a long way above them. She makes another full swoop, and this time there is no wnistake about it, for she hits the heron so hard that he is nearly stupified. ‘Sultan’ joins in the fray and catches. Whoo-whoo-o-p! down they come. Down they all three’ go together, till, just before reaching the ground, the two old hawks let go of their prey, which falls bump. Before he has had time to recover himself, in a moment the hawks are on him, ‘De Ruyter’ on the neck, and ‘Sultan’ on his body. Hurrah for the gallant hawks! and loud whoops pro- claim his capture. ‘Wouldn’t take 100% for them,’ says their owner, who has ridden well, judiciously as well as hard, and has got up in time to save the heron’s life. He gives the hawks a pigeon, and puts the heron between his knees in a position so that he can neither spike him nor the hawks with his bill. He has two beautiful long black feathers, which are duly presented to Prince Alexsander — alas! now no more — who is well up at the take. These feathers are the badge of honour in heron-hawking in Holland, as the fox’s brush is in hunting in England. The HERON-HAWKING. 147 hawks are fed up as speedily as possible, the heron has a ring put round his leg and is let loose, evidently not knowing what to make of it. “ We hasten back as fast as we can, but the weather being now hot, the herons move more by night than by day. Many anxious eyes search the horizon for another. Opera-glasses are brought into requisition, and one gentleman called @ la volée! to a gnat which got before the focus of his glass. At-last two herons are viewed coming flapping lazily along. Every oue is again on the alert, and the horses are mounted. It is a fair ‘hood off’ for the young hawks. A pretty little flight; and the result —the hawks for- tunately sticking to the same bird —a capture. He is taken after having made about six or seven rings, and in ten stoops the whoop resounds. Peter, the other head-falconer, has on hand two good hawks to fly, and all are wishing for a good heron to try their merits. In about half an hour one is seen coming rather wide; he has evidently been flown before, and now turns back down wind as hard as if the hawks were after him, being soon lost to sight. Great dis- appointment. In ten minutes another is a la voléed, and brought down in first-rate style. It is eight o’clock, and the falconers feed up. But the owner of ‘Sultan’ and ‘De Ruyter’ has a hawk called ‘ Rocket,’ which he does not care much about, as she is sure to crab another if fown with her; besides, she does not trouble herself after two or three stoops. This L2 148 FALCONRY. waiting ‘just five minutes longer’ ends with the take of another heron at the second stoop. We then scamper off as fast as we can to supper, the late hour of which accounts for midday slumbers. “The next day was just the one we could have wished for the sport; for, as we had foretold, rain came the evening before, and there were plenty of herons flying. The wind was then 8.W., and the field Wesen. About three o’clock we are there, and all the hawks, good, bad, and indifferent, are taken out — some to train who are backward, either from wildness or not taking kindly to heron; some who had been beaten off after long flights, or had been lost, and wanted entering again. About twenty- eight are on the cadges: they begin with a ‘train ’— i.e. a bagged heron — on the way; but, like a bagged fox, it is not good for much, and is soon taken. A little better flight with the next ‘train, and the hawks are promised to fly a wild one to-morrow. These two herons then received their liberty, but would not fly at first a hundred ‘yards at a time, evidently expecting to be pounced on again. «¢ Here we are at the field; hitherto we have been only on the way to it. The two sets of falconers, with their hawks, place themselves about half a mile apart, to intercept the herons on their passage back from their fishing-grounds. ‘ EPILEPSY. — THE KECKS.— THE FROUNCE. — SMALL TUMOURS ON THE FEET.—THE BLAIN.—FRACTURES.—PARASITES, —A PURGE, AND CASTINGS.—A FRIEND'S ANSWER ON A SUBJECT OF ANTIQUITY.— INDIAN HAWKS AND HAWKING, — MANAGEMENT OF HAWKS AT THE CAMPS.—FAREWELL. I must apologise for this chapter —it is the last, and, in some parts, the ugliest of all; not, perhaps, that the former fact will distress many, but my readers must try to forgive the latter. However, the dish is served up with some excellent Indian pickle, which will be found in due cowrse. This is an appendix, and will stand on its privileges. I have tried to be systematic and methodical through nineteen long chapters; let us, in the name of mercy, have a nice, complicated, lazy, refreshing jumble to end with ! During the publication in “The Field” of the aforesaid “nineteen,” I received a very considerable number of courteous letters from strangers; con- taining, in the first place, a little incense which I was begged to burn at the shrine of Vanity; and, in the second, a list of questions on the Art of Falconry INQUIRIES. 287 which the writers hoped I would be kind enough to answer. I was—not kind enough, but — grateful enough to reply privately to most of those queries ; and, in doing so, I had occasion to remark to many who propounded them, that the required solutions might be found by reference to some former chapter. Still, I know that, when a small work like the present drags its slow length through more than a year and a half in the periodical in which it appears, the best memory cannot always retain the whole of the facts recorded, to say nothing of the order in which they were written. In their present form of a volume, and with the advantage of an index, I trust these papers may not be considered incomplete; but I make it my business now to attempt to supply any omissions which I may have made during their com- position. “‘What,” says one correspondent, “is a ‘make- hawk?’”—A “ make-hawk,” my dear sir, is an old and experienced hawk flown with a young and in- experienced one, in order that the latter may be incited to perseverance, and instructed in manners. Such a help, however, can only be employed when the birds showno signs of “ crabbing.” Again, “ How do you prevent two birds ‘crabbing’ in the air or on the lure?” You cannot prevent them from crabbing in the air; but, if you use but one lure, take one of the birds from it to your hand with a piece of beef as soon as both bind. “ How to hood a hawk without 288 FALCONRY. disgusting or alienating him thereby?” Cultivate a manual dexterity, which comes to some men sooner’ than to others, but which in any case can only be acquired by practice. Work away, if you like, ata kestrel for a fortnight. Also, rather drop the left hand, and turn it outwards ; this will oblige the hawk to keep his head tolerably steady, and also’ to thrust it towards the hood. When the hawk is tame enough to feed from the hand “ barefaced,” he may be made to pick a few pieces of meat out of the hood, which is to be of course held in the right hand. Other directions may be found in their proper place. With regard to cats killing hawks in captivity, my own experience has been that’ they will not touch them. I know that an immense wild tom-cat was in the habit of prowling among my merlins at night, and that he did not hurt them. At the same time the fate of Mr. Brodrick’s goshawk shows that: cats, in this matter, are not absolutely to be depended upon. My friend’s bird was attacked in the garden, in open day, and was so injured that it was mercy to kill it. I have no further information on this subject which is not negative. I have heard of a rat or rats in- juring merlins, and of a male sparrow-hawk having been killed by a stoat or’a weasel —I forget which. Mr. Brodrick had a peregrine tiercel knocked off its perch, at night, by an owl; really “by a mousing owl hawked at, and (I think) killed ”—more probably by the hanging than the blow. Foxes have been MOULTING. 289 known to. pass by trained hawks at night, leaving them untouched. And now a few words on an important subject, viz. moulting. Hawks, as I need scarcely mention, change all their feathers once a year. For instance, the nestlings of this summer will begin to moult in 1860; young peregrines, if kept fat at the time, will probably drop the first feather— the seventh in the wing— between the middle of March and the middle of April. Merlins are later; but they are in full plumage again by the middle of September, as are often young peregrines. By taking care that a hawk is in flying order, and by constantly working him, you may so postpone the important part of the moult that he will fly well till September. Captain Salvin has several times done this. In point of fact, it is quite possible to fly hawks —I don’t speak of the same individuals —all the year round. The second and subsequent moults always commence later than the first moult. The birds may pass their period of moult at liberty in a room, or confined to blocks out of doors under cover of the shed in very hot or wet weather; but, when out of doors, on fine soft grass. The fatter they are kept, the sooner the moult will be over. If they are moulted.in rooms (the most expeditious, but not always the most convenient way), great care must be taken to cover any angles with double matting, in order that no feathers may be injured in case of a hasty flight round the room, or towards the roof. U 290 FALCONRY. Each bird should have a room to itself.* Large, round, smooth stones will serve as blocks. The floor must be covered with sand to the depth of several inches. Every falconer should have some room or loft which will answer the purpose of mews—the larger the better. Here he may, if he choose, moult his hawks; and here also he may place them to pro- tect them from stormy and snowy weather, when they are in flying order (plenty of straw in such cases being round their blocks). It is obvious that two or more such rooms are necessary to many falconers. As for shape, that will probably be left to chance; for I certainly shall not discourage the young falconer by telling him that he must have mews built. The room must be ventilated by its own chimney, or, if it lack that, by some device which will not let in the day. There must be a window and a close-fitting door, through which no stream of light can enter. The window must have the closest possible shutters, all, of course, to be opened and closed at pleasure. I have-mentioned in a previous chapter under what circumstances it is necessary to make the room quite dark, and I need not recapitulate them. Hawks require a bath at all seasons, and in very hot weather it may be offered daily. Let them have, as a rule, more food during the cold than during the hot months; when in moult, however, they can scarcely * Goshawks should be moulted either on the bow-perch, under a shed (where there is plenty of grass), or separately in rooms, MEDICAL MANAGEMENT, 291 have too much, and some peregrines may be fed twice a day; merlins at least twice, better perhaps three times; sparrow-hawks and hobbies twice; goshawks once, and well, When the moult is over, and the hawk fit for getting into flying order, he must be carried and almost rebroken to the hood. Reduce the quantity of food for two days, but return to it thoroughly on the third. If beef be used, it may be dipped once in cold water, and squeezed nearly dry. The little weight which you intend the bird to lose must be lost gradually. Give castings daily, and once, perhaps, during this preparation for flight, a couple of grains of rhubarb on an empty stomach, without castings. Do not trust only to “ carriage” for bringing back good order and training ; but before the hawk is put on the wing at liberty, let him bate to the swung lure from his block, on which he has been placed unhooded, on thick fine grass, immedi- ately putting the food within his reach when you find he is sufficiently eager. He may also be flown once, in an open place, in a fifty yard creance, to the lure. During the period of moult, the hawks—I assume— have been fed from the hand, as they sat either on the fist or block. It will never do to throw the food in amongst the sand, and leave the birds to fight it out. But I ought to beg pardon for seeming to think it possible that such a thing could be done. And now for the pharmacopeia. You must some- times throw a little physic to hawks as well as dogs; v2 292 FALCONRY. but very little, and very seldom. JI have been asked a great deal about diseases; but they are either very few, or not readily recognised. Our ancestors had pages on pages of recipes—very ‘elaborate, very curious, and very incomprehensible. Take the follow- ing nice little remedy. I don’t mean, swallow it yourself; Heaven forbid! but take it—it’s a very easy way——as an example. In point of fact, “Take germander, pelamountain, basil, grummel-seed, and broom-flowers, of each half an ounce; hyssop, sassafras, polypodium, and horse-mints, of each a quarter of an ounce, and the like of nutmegs; cubebs, borage, mummy, mugwort, sage, and-the four kinds of miro- bolans, of each half an ounce; of aloes succotrine the fifth part of an ounce, and of saffron one whole ounce.”* This is to be “ put into a hen’s gut, tied at both ends.” I hope it may be found agreeable. I suppose all this means that a happy mixture of purgatives and stimulants is occasionally desirable. Let us look seriously into the matter; but I know that I shall disappoint the reader, for there is really little or nothing to add to the last pages of “ Falconry in the British Isles,” Cramp.— This attacks hawks in their extreme youth, when they have been taken from the nest too soon.t It breaks the bones of peregrines, and para- * “Gentlemen’s Recreation,” 1677. ¢ Capt. Salvin, however, has seen tetanus produced in w falcon by the sudden loss of a claw, as she was taken roughly from a rook. She died from the attack, APOPLEXY, 293 lyses the feet of sparrow-hawks. There is no cure for it. Should nestlings unfortunately be sent to the falconer when they are little more than out of the down, the only thing which I can imagine as likely to be of service, is the keeping them in a very warm room, amongst a depth of straw, and perhaps, if they are very young, placing a flannel over them. But this is only conjecture, as I never had occasion to try the plan. Avropiuxy.—This disease has been found by some of my brother falconers to be very fatal to merlins. I am not aware that it ever killed a bird of that species in my possession. When I have lost these little birds, by disease, they have died, in damp weather, of some affection in the crop: symptoms — perfectly green mutes, sometimes changing to black, accompanied by an erect position on the block, with (often) a stretching up of the neck and head. There is no further convulsion ; and this cannot be apoplexy. It is probably inflammation of the crop. A grain of rhubarb may be given to the smaller hawks when ill; they must be fed frequently, but somewhat sparingly, with light food, such as live sparrows, &c.; no béef, unless it is pounded to a paste. But when a merlin is seriously ill, one can do little more than hope against hope. Mr. Holford had a famous merlin which died in a fit, when in the act of killing a thrush in the field. This probably was apoplexy, and it is not the only case of the kind which has reached me. I have seen a U3 294 FALCONRY. favourite sparrow-hawk of my own die in a fit, and over-fat goshawks may be killed by apoplexy, espe- cially if they are allowed to bate in a hot sun. Pere- grines, if ordinary care be used, are exempt. In the case of nestling merlins, which have flown at hack for some weeks near the house, I am quite convinced, from experience, that the best plan is, on the first symptoms of illness which are at all decided, to give a slight purge; two hours after it, half a crop of light food ; to put on a couple of hack-bells, and give the hawk its liberty: after a few days’ hack, it may pro- bably be taken up, quite restored to health. Epitepsy may attack peregrines, but I am not aware that any special treatment belongs to it. Tur Kecxs, also called the Croaxs, is a sort of cough which may attack a peregrine, and is generally produced by damp. Remedy: Six or seven bruised pepper-corns, given in the castings; keep the bird: dry, and fly it to the lure three times a day. High feeding, and frequent ; but the food easy of digestion. Tue Frouncz.—This disease is said to be very similar to the thrush which sometimes attacks young children, Like many others, it proceeds from damp. If taken in time, it may be cured. Remedy: Scrape off, with a clean quill cut for the purpose, all the diseased coating with which the swollen tongue and palate ave covered. The bleeding parts are to be dressed with burnt alum mixed with vinegar. If a rod of nitrate of silver be used, it must be used very slightly, or it may occasion sloughing. VARIOUS DISEASES. 295 ‘SMALL Tumours, or swelling on the feet and toes, which are occasioned either by accident or by long standing on a hard block, may generally be removed by opening them carefully with a sharp knife. Of course the bird must in future be placed upon a soft, perhaps a padded block. This complaint is gene- rally spoken of as “ corns.” INFLAMMATION OF THE Crop.—Symptoms: Throw- ing up the food after it has been some little time in the crop. The appetite is tolerably good; but the bird loses strength, and may soon die. — Treatment : Give two or three grains of rhubarb in the morning, fasting, and repeat the dose every second or third day. The hawk should have rather frequent but small meals of light food. No castings. The warm flesh of rooks or pigeons is good. Worms.— Give river sand upon the meat, and every other morning, fasting, a dose of rhubarb. Ranaue.—Falconers of old gave their hawks small stones, thrusting them into the throat. This is not done now; but experiments are being tried on the voluntary system, and they seem to succeed. Tue Briarn.—It “ consists of watery vesicles within the second joint of the wing, and is supposed to be peculiar to passage-hawks.” The swollen part may sometimes be lanced with advantage; but if the disease is of long standing it may produce a stiff joint. No thorough cure. Fracturgs.—Curable in the leg, especially if below U4 206 FALCONRY. the joint; almost incurable inthe wing. ‘ Where the bone is simply fractured, as far as the restoration of the bird’s power is concerned, it will be necessary to have the bird held firmly by an assistant, and, after the care- ful adjustment of the broken surfaces, to secure the bone in its proper position, either by a bandage of calico, previously dipped in strong starch, which hardens in drying, or by forming a neat splint of gutta percha to fit the limb. This is easily done by softening a strip of the material, about the thickness of ordinary shoe- leather, in warm water, and while in that state moulding it to the limb, and when cold and hard trimming and rounding the edges, and sewing on tape-strings. This form of splint will keep the broken parts immovable, and after about three weeks’ time may be removed, when the limb will be found straight and sound again; the plumage acts as a soft wadding between the splint and skin, and thus pre- vents the latter from becoming chafed. When, how- ever, the fracture is a compound one (where the broken ends of the bone are forced through the sur- rounding muscles), and the flesh much lacerated, the part should be bathed repeatedly with warm water, and not bound up tightly until the inflammation and swelling have in a manner subsided ; after which it must be treated as in the former instance. The wounded bird should be kept as quiet as possible, in a darkened room, and fed twice a day upon a light diet, such as the flesh of rabbits cut into small pieces, and PARASITES. 297 given from the hand.”— Falconry im the British Isles. Parasites. — There is a very curious flying tick found on young merlins, which does them no harm and soon leaves them. It comes from the moors. I have seen it also often on the peregrine, on young grouse, and I think on plover shot in the neighbourhood of moors. Once I was introduced to a highly respectable bullfinch, in Northamptonshire, which was said to have been attacked by one of these creatures, and it was found a very difficult matter to catch the parasite: con- siderable warmth, if my memory serves me, was resorted to in order to induce the vermin to show himself out- side the feathers. It is wonderful how quickly the hard flat body, with flat wings, disappears before you can touch it. Lice may be got from rooks, or partridges of a late hatch, during the time the hawk is killing the quarry. Frequent bathing is the best remedy ; should this fail, a decoction of tobacco mixed with spirit may be applied to the neck and shoulders. There is also a species of acarus which burrows in the nares, and which must be got rid of as soon as pos- sible; it is a sort of dark red mite. A fine camel’s hair pencil and the tobacco-wash are remedies; in bad cases the red precipitate of mercury ointment should be applied. The hawk affected with this worst of all parasites must be kept from his compa- nions till he is pure. For A Puregs.—Two or three grains of rhubarb 298 FALCONRY: given (toa peregrine) in a piece of meat, on an empty stomach, without castings. If only a laxative is re- quired, pounded sugar-candy rubbed into meat acts well; also water, conveyed by dipping in it several pieces of meat. Thick lumpy mutes show that the bowels require an artificial relief. I like to see mutes full; not very thick, nor very thin; white, with no rainbow streaks; but a little lump of black in the middle is quite admissible. Beware, however, of being fanciful, and of giving too many drugs. The whitest and most healthy-looking mutes come from fresh beef, castings having been given. These castings, which will be found under the block or perch, should be looked at; allis right if they are free from indigested food or slime, of a nice oval shape, without smell. A small piece of the skin of a young rabbit, the hair inside, is a good casting to convey pepper. Peregrines and goshawks, if fed and flown regularly, and kept dry, and yet out of the scorching sun, have seldom - any serious ailment. I confess that the old falconers would have laughed at my simple doctor’s shop and very unassuming kitchen. They would have ridiculed the absence of the “ complexions ”— black, blank, russet, &c.— with the cock’s flesh for “melancholic” hawks, and lamb’s flesh for the “ choleric:” they would certainly have been angered that I did not “incorporate” meense and mummy with my castings, and add cassia fistula to my purges. INDIAN HAWES. 299 I onée wrote to a dear friend of mine to ask the question, “What is mummy?” His answer was, I have no doubt, correct, but perhaps scarcely ex- plicit; “mummy,” he said, “is mummy.” In can- dour, however, I should add that he proceeded to observe: “It is often used as a paint, the asphalte with which bodies were preserved being probably the colouring matter, and perhaps the medicine.” So much for physic! T said that this chapter was a medley and an ap- pendix; so perhaps the following may be not much out of place. In itself it is exceedingly interesting. I offer it in the form of scraps, which I took from the letter of Major R Capt. Salvin. , an officer in India, to- INDIAN HAWKS AND HAWKING. Tae Luceer.—This is a beautiful falcon, not so large as the peregrine, but with a longer tail. It is very dark; the female’s breast nearly black — not a speck of white; the head, light coloured, like a light peregrine’s, contrasts curiously with the dark plumage. The adult bird is like a young peregrine; for, instead of assuming the transverse bars on the breast, the dark breast changes to white, with longitudinal markings. The back never be- comes blue, but the head gets darker and very like a young peregrine’s. In the first year the feet are bluish, but the mature bird has a very beautiful 300 FALCONRY. bright yellow cere and feet. Strange to say, they do not bear the heat well, and sometimes die in their hoods of sun-stroke. They are not quite so swift as the peregrine, but good footers. Pigeons and quails were the quarry. No implements for hawking were to be met with at Cawnpore. The Indian birdlime is very good, crows and kites being caught with it; it is a difficult matter to get it off the feathers— oil is used for the purpose. Cawnpore is not a good place for sporting; a man can only get out from 4.30 am. to 7 A.m., and from 5 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. Eagles. are a great nuisance to the falconer ; they follow the falcon, and make her drop ‘the quarry. It is necessary, therefore, to let your servant carry a rifle. : Hawks in India are much tamer than those in Europe. A falcon was seen to fly a tiny dove, which had a very narrow escape by slipping down an old well. The falcon lit on the top, just over, and Major R spiked down a pigeon within thirty yards of where she stood. He took out about 100 yards of line, made a noose over the pigeon (after a way described in a previous chapter), and caught the hawk directly. At another time he saw a merlin eating a pipit; immediately a quail was pegged down, a noose and pull-line arranged, and the mer- lin transported to his house.* Major R-— con- * An officer of the Rifle Brigade sent me an old female sparrow- hawk, a month or two ago, which was caught at his house in Scot- INDIAN HAWKS. 301 tinues :—“ A sparrow-hawk did what I never saw a sparrow-hawk do before. It is a female, of an Indian variety, smaller than our bird. I shot at a blue rock pigeon, near an old castle, and knocked feathers out. The bird would have gone off, but this little beggar dashed out from a tamarind-tree and caught the pigeon. For once in a way I had no materials for catching hawks. Here was a go! I badly wanted a sparrow-hawk ; here was a stunner, which I was sure to catch if I had my things. Well, I was determined to have her, so I left my groom to watch, and keep her from eating too much, and galloped off to a village on the river, hardly hoping to get anything, as string is bad and scarce in Indian villages. Luckily, however, I went into a house where they had some fishing-line. I easily got a trowel and spikes. The hawk was still there, and I caught her the moment I left the snare after arranging it. She will be a clipper. She takes a pigeon without hesitation, no matter how big it is. “T shot a curious sort of eagle the other day, and in its crop it had four snakes, each of which the natives tell me would kill a man inan hour. I have given away my tame eagle to H 3 it is still a land, by the butler, in the manner alluded to above. The hawk had killed a wood pigeon. She was put off it, the snare set, and she caught on her return. I trained this bird in a few weeks to fly to hand at any distance. Lalso killed bagged starlings thrown from the hand with her. She was on the point of an introduction — or re-introduction —to wild quarry when she was lost by an accident. 302 “FALCONRY. great pet. H keeps him at hack: he sleeps every night in the verandah, in front of the door of his room, The merlins—I have another which I took from the nest a month ago—are rum little birds. They would be beauties were it not for their chestnut-coloured heads, which I don’t like 3; other- wise their plumage is exactly that of an old peregrine. They are very plucky little hawks, and very swift. “I heard much of hawking at Lucknow, but found none. “ This morning I caught a beautiful falcon ; I had watched her for three days. It settles a point about the plumage of luggers. In the second year, after the first moult is completed, the lugger only loses her white head; the breast remains black. This falcon is just finishing her moult, and very beautiful she is with her new feathers—such~a bloom on them! Her legs are not so yellow as the old hawks. I now fancy my oldest falcon is five years old. This new falcon will fly first. Iam now feeding up the others like fun, to get them through their moult, I forgot to mention that the day before I left Cawnpore I caught a falcon—the one I say I fancy must be five years. old. Her breast is a fine clear white without a speck, except at the sides,” The following communication from Major R—— has been received subsequently to the foregoing, and is crowded with interesting matter :— “TI find that here, as everywhere, there is no bird, INDIAN HAWKS. 303 on the whole, better than a peregrine. The sha- been I have not seen, or even its skin. The fal- coners I have questioned have never seen it, though they have heard of it. The falcons best known and most generally used in the parts of India I have visited, from Calcutta to Delhi, are the cheskh, which is like a very large lugger, swifter and pluckier than that bird, and flown at the heron, black curlew, hares, &c. It is considered inferior to the peregrine for most quarry; but a peregrine, for what reason I know not, is not flown at the black kite, whereas the cheskh is. The falconers admit that a peregrine would most probably take them if tried, but they have never seen it done. I have never seen a trained cheskh; indeed, only one specimen of the bird at all, which I shot, not having at hand means of catching her, and wishing to inspectit. The cheskh in its wild state feeds almost entirely on small ground game, a large sort of lizard, and rats; it rarely kills birds, except in hard weather. Its plumage is not so bright, hard, and clean as a peregrine’s. The foot is much smaller. Next in size is the peregrine. Most falconers in India, about Lucknow, and Oude in general, will tell you that the peregrine (or bhyree), is the finest falcon in the world. They have heard of the shabeen, and safed cohee*, and coquila, tiercel of the safed cohee, * Literally, White cohee, 304 FALCONRY. as they have heard the jer-faleon and her tiercel called, but they don’t count these birds, but seem to consider their existence as almost mythical. The peregrine is always used in India as a passage hawk — literally a passage hawk — as they are taken only for about four or five months in the year when they come, following the flights of wild fowl in the winter. Chiefly red hawks are taken. The bird is quite undistinguishable from our European birds. I have seen them of all sizes and shades of colour. In India they seem to prey almost entirely on water- fowl, and live near great lakes. “ Next comes the cohee. My men tell me there are three varieties of the cohee. I have only seen one. The one I know is, in the young plumage, exactly like a young peregrine, but that the plumage has a red glow, the cere and feet are much deeper yellow than in the peregrine, and the feet are larger in proportion to the bird’s size, as is the case with all the varieties of cohee; and the cry differs. In the adult plumage the head is of a chestnut red, back and wings of a light slate colour, and. the breast gets transverse bars, as in the peregrine. It is a visitor as far south as Lucknow. It is said to breed in the Ne- paulese mountains, and near the Raptee river in trees. Its chief prey is parrots and doves, It is very swift, though not so clever at repeating a stroke as a peregrine. It mounts very high, and generally kills at its first stoop, I have only one cohee now; LUGGER AND MERLIN. 305 I had two, but one turned out useless, and I let it go; the one I use is an adult bird. I will not fail of securing you some skins of the cohee. “Next comes the lugger, which I described in a former letter. It preys, like the cheskh, on ground game, and rarely kills birds, except such as are weakly, in its wild state. “ Next, the Indian merlin (or turmutz), a beau- tiful little falcon, quite different from our merlin in everything except size and proportions of wing and tail, which are precisely the same. Its colour is totally different. The head is red, and the back and wings and tail blue, and the breast marked with transverse black bars on a white ground, like an adult peregrine. It is an exceedingly swift hawk; some falconers say the swiftest of all, It is used in India for-flying at the roller, which is an exceedingly difficult bird to take. Very few peregrines can do it. It mounts to a great height, and tumbles about in the air in a wonderful manner. By the way, the turmutz is the only hawk in India of which two are employed at the same quarry. The season for merlin flying is shortly coming on, and I shall soon look out for some. The hobby I have not seen. So much for the long-winged hawks. “The goshawk is held in India in higher estima- tion, perhaps, than any other hawk. It is exactly the thing to suit a native — never being lost, and killing such a quantity and such.a variety of game. - x 306 FALCONRY. “Next comes the basha, a short-winged hawk, which I consider identical with our English sparrow-hawk. It and the goshawk are migratory about Central, and probably are not found in Southern India. They come, like the peregrine, in the cold months fora short time, and are said to breed in the hills of Nepaul. It, the basha, is thrown from the hand. “Last comes the sicara, or Indian sparrow-hawk, a wonderfully plucky little brute:—thrown from the hand. In the young plumage the bars are longi- tudinal, as in the young goshawk. It is highly valued by natives, but I don’t care a rush for the bird. It lives all the year round in India, and breeds here. By the way, the lugger and merlin are the only other species which breed in the hot parts of India. The sicara sparrow-hawk is flown all the year round, and takes an infinity of game. It is valued by the rich, but chiefly it is in high favour with the poor, who cannot afford the valu- able migratory hawks. I have seen them take hun- dreds of crows, jays, &c.; and I am told that a male sicara will actually seize on a white heron, and hang to him till the bird comes down and is caught, though many are killed by the heron’s beak. I donot doubtit, from whatI haveseen. For this purpose it is necessary to sneak very close to the heron while he is feeding, and throw the hawk -with all your forceat him. The sparrow-hawk (basha and sicara) never kill except when thrown; and when < MAGNIFICENT HAWKS. 307 trained to be thrown, never attempt to catch any- thing without this assistance. “T broke five falcons and four tiercels; but lost a tiercel and caught a falcon immediately after, and I let the young cohee go. Since I arrived at Delhi I caught a young tiercel and two falcons, and I had one falcon brought tome. Magnificent hawks! but what on earth to do with them I don’t know. One is six years old. These I do not count in my establishment, as I am undecided whether to kill them for their feathers, which I cannot bear to do, or to turn them loose; and I have a hankering wish to keep them, though of course they will be useless when the hawks come in at the beginning of the cold season. Indeed, I believe that the wisest plan would be always to turn out the hawks in March, and catch fresh hawks every October; but I do not like turning out my good hawks, and shall at all events keep them to look at. It is quite impossible now to work a peregrine, and, except a few days in the rains, when they may be flown at easy quarry in the early mornings and late in the evenings, they will be idle till October. Natives only keep the very best. Hawks are never clean moulted till December. Most of these peregrines were caught by myself; some two or three were brought home by native bird-catchers. One pere- grine was taken from the train of the rebel Begum of Oude, by one of the loyal Zemindars, together with x2 308 FALCONRY. a goshawk, and the commissioner of the district got them for me. The falcon has evidently been se- lected for her beauty for the Begum, and has been taken the greatest care of. She is two years old, and has not a blemish, now every one of her nest- ling feathers has fallen. She is a perfect picture of a peregrine; very bright blue, with a bloom on it, and a fast hawk. The goshawk is three years old; was a present from Benee Madho to the Begum; she is clean moulted, and a nice hawk. My best falcon, ‘Tigress,’ is an old falcon (two years old), which I caught myself at Bijnow. She had moulted clean before she was caught — is a very black hawk. She was the first old falcon I had in my mews, and native falconers were strongly advising me not to have anything to do with her, and break none but young red hawks. I insisted, more on account of the beauty of the falcon than anything, and she has turned out the pluckiest and swiftest falcon I have ever seen. Now, though my men and the Nawabs have been falconers all their lives, and are first-rate fellows in their way, yet everything they do is by rule. They did not speak, as they told me, from experience, when they tried to dissuade me from training the wild old falcon, but on prin- ciple; and I heard Peerbux, my head falconer, say to another near him, while the falcon was going up to a heron, ‘I will never reject an old falcon again, if I get her clean moulted.’ Certainly it will never ARE YOUNG HAWKS FASTEST ? 309 do to stint a hawk in her grub, &c.,, when she is . yet moulting; and if I found an old falcon very fractious, I would not break her, as one must fly her so light that the young hawks would be better; but I often thought, and this season’s experience has confirmed my opinion, that provided an old falcon be clean moulted, and very carefully dealt with, she is swifter and more powerful than young hawks. * Falconers are in the habit of saying the young hawks are the fastest ; but this is surely impossible. It would be absurd to say a young grouse can go like an old cock; and with other birds the same argu- ment applies. Undoubtedly old hawks are much the most difficult to manage at first. A young falcon, —very like your falcon ‘ Assegai’ in appearance, only much handsomer, never having been in a basket, &e., —is the next best: she is capital at black curlew; and I have frequently seen her take the long-billed curlew. This she would do, turning from a heron in the most provoking manner. She is nearly as fast as the old hawk. I have two clipping tiercels, — splendid plover-hawks: it is capital sport, plover- hawking! none but passage-hawks, I am sure, could do it. “My falcons are flying at herons, white herons, ‘black curlew, wild ducks, spoonbills, and one has killed a crane. The tiercels fly white herons, teal, plover, and paddy birds, a sort of bittern (I should say were flying, as they cannot work now). x3 310 FALCONRY. “The goshawk is now killing partridges, and occa- sionally a hare; but in the cold weather she killed no end of peacocks, hares, wild ducks, little white herons (it won’t do to fly a goshawk at the big white heron, because, as you know, she does not secure the head and neck as quickly as does a peregrine, and will get stabbed). A good goshawk in the young plumage takes eagles and kites. My goshawk catches crows like fun; but of all quarry she prefers par- tridges and faces “T will now give you the results of a morning’s hawking, on which occasion I killed 28 head, viz.:— 3 herons 8 white ditto ] 8 partridges 7 paddy birds | kitted with ohare | gated with 3 plover the peregrines, I peacock the goshawk. 1 wild duck ¥ 22 “T don’t wonder at Mr. Barker imagining he could take partridges in England with the goshawk. One would not think there was much difference in pace between our birds and the Indian; but there must be, inasmuch as I am satisfied no goshawk could touch an English bird, and I see here they never miss an Indian partridge. I have not tried the black partridge as yet. “ April 20th.— Last night I was out with the goshawk between five and seven p.m. She refused all the hares, but killed two and a half brace of par- tridges. I see she will not go on flying much longer: FLYING TWO FALCONS. 811 she is dreadfully punished by the heat. She affords great sport to those who do not understand much of hawking: they are pleased with the large bags of game, and the hare-killing. “Natives never think of flying two falcons, either peregrine or cheskh, at a heron: no falconer I have met with ever heard of such a thing. I said I would do it, but I never have: all my falcons have killed herons single-handed. No peregrine falcon, say they, ought ever to fail in killing a heron, unless from ‘some such obvious cause, as the heron falling into a large sheet of water. J have never seen a long flight at a heron, even a light one: when the hawk is hooded off at a heron at a moderate height, say two gunshots, the hawks generally kill at the third stoop; or, say the falconers, ‘the falcon is playing with the heron’ (if she is a good hawk), and fly her no more that day, but physic her next morning, after feeding her on washed meat the same evening on which she is flown. I have seen some splendid flights at lofty herons, however. The hawks here have far greater determination and dash than I have seen shown by hawks in Europe. Mine are all very nice hawks, — such a pretty show!—-no broken feathers; and, being all passage-hawks, no “singers” among them. I have one tiercel and one falcon which mantle over their food, which trick I detest: I shall get rid of the falcon for it, but I would not part with the tiercel on any consideration. x4 312 FALCONRY. “The black curlew is, next to the heron, the best quarry my falcons have flown at. I like this sport well enough; but the worst of it is that the black curlew has got an abominable trick, when he is well aloft, and finds he must give in, of using all his remaining strength in a dash at avillage, He is five times out of six taken in the air during this effort; and the consequence is that the hawk is liable to bé in a scrape with a cur-dog, or, if she is at all shy, disappointed of her quarry by being obliged to let go. However hard you may ride, and however well- mounted you may be, it is impossible always to guard against misfortunes at this work. It is much better when you are stationary at a place, as then you can warn the villages all round; but at the time I had the best of my curlew hawking I was marching up country, and consequently going into a new country every day. I never had an accident to the falcon, by luck, but on several occasions they were disappointed of their quarry, and had to be taken down, as it won’t do to let a passage-hawk be wheeling about in the air till you can get up to serve her, more especially in such a country as India. “T had an unlucky accident with a tiercel in the early part of the season; he has, however, quite re- covered now. He had bound to a night-heron in the air, and got struck by its beak on the pinion-joint. For a few days he could not fly at all, and I feared it was all up with him; but he got better, and killed FLIGHT AT GEESE. 313 paddy birds. Ashe got still better he killed white herons, and at last took plover again; and when I left off flying peregrines he was the swiftest tiercel : he mantles. He takes wild pigeons, which is a most unfortunate habit, and makes it dangerous to fly him, —at any rate till some peregrine has been on the wing near at hand. Pigeons do not avoid the lugger or cheskh, The night-heron is good quarry for a tiercel, so is the white heron in all its varieties, egrets, &c. One species is bigger than the great grey heron.. But I like plover-hawking best of all for a tiercel: his speed and activity are more severely tested. Hawks are rarely made to wait on in India; natives do not care about it. Wild ducks and teal are the only quarry for which they are made to wait on: a hawk is never flown out of the hood at this quarry. «JT saw a curious thing near Billore lately. A young falcon of mine, very like ‘Assegai’ of yours, had flown a black curlew. She killed close to some natives, unfortunately, near the edge of ariver. She was at this time rather shy, having only just completed her training. The crops were very high, and there was no open place large enough to give her a good sweep at the lure; and, after striking at it a few times, she sat down on the bank, the far side from us. I was preparing a live pigeon with a long string, that she might truss it in the air, when five or six wild geese came over from some other part of the country, high in the air, and passed over the falcon; and to my horror I saw the falcon look up, open her wings, and 814 FALCONRY. rattle away after the geese, as hard as she could go. ‘They wont stop under four cop (six miles),’ said Peerbux, my falconer. He was mistaken. They went till they were specks in the sky (a good distance on a clear Indian morning): the falcon was undistin- guishable. I had given up hopes, when the specks looked larger and larger,—so we all said. There was very soon not much doubt the geese were returning, but the falcon was not to be seen. At last they got within easy sight of us, when all of a sudden the geese opened out in all directions, and the falcon shot like an arrow through them, marking her course with a cloud of white feathers, leaving one goose staggering, while the others made the best of their way off. The falcon was up again in a few seconds, and at him again, with the same effect as before. At the third attack she bound to him, and fell about 200 yards on the other side the river. One of the Nawab’s falconers swam over and lay by the falcon. I galloped off to a bridge about a mile off, as I did not want to get wet under a hot sun with ten miles to ride afterwards, and came up before the falcon had done feeding, —most fortunately, as she would not let the naked falconer get within ten yards of her, but jumped off the goose. That was the most extraordi- nary and the luckiest flight I ever saw. Peerbux tells me he has in his life lost six or seven heron hawks by their going away at a disadvantage straight on end at wild geese, but never saw a kill like that before. “ April 21st.—I went out last night with the gos- WILD DUCKS AND PIGEONS. 315 hawk. She had plenty of chances at hares, but only took one leveret and a brace of partridges. She is very much oppressed by the heat. In a very few days flying her will be out of the question. I let two magnificent old falcons go last night, after levying a a small tax on them in wing and tail feathers. One of the falcons instantly killed a parroquet when she had got up. The other rattled away after some teal, over the Jumna, at a great distance off. Pigeons are ex- ceedingly cheap here. I sometimes buy them by the hundred, in the large towns, at from two to three rupees a hundred. In the country I have hired a day’s services of a bird-catcher for a few pence, and received a hundred and fifty pigeons. Grain in abundance; to feed them is exceedingly cheap. Wild ducks are excellent food for hawks. I have bought them near Delhi at one rupee for fifty. Pigeons swarm all over the country; common blue rocks. They breed by thousands down the shafts of dry wells; the same kind is found in equally large numbers, breeding about the houses of crowded cities, as in the loveliest parts of the jungle. I fancy peregrines in India prefer wild ducks and waterfowl to all other quarry. When they come fresh from the wild state they well know the whistling of their wings as they pass over head. I have often seen the falcons sitting unhooded on the falconer’s hands near a fire, before it was light enough to hawk or even to shoot a duck going over, but the moment the sound of wild ducks’ wings was heard, all the 316 FALCONRY. hawks rose up and stared into the sky, and if they caught the least view they baited furiously, being in trim for flying. The bird-catchers tell me that they have seen a peregrine go in chase of a flight of wild fowl before it was well light, heard her kill, and found the duck. “ April 23rd.— My falcons are suffering tremen- dously from the heat; I do not expect they will all live. Only one, the Begum’s falcon, is in the highest health and spirits; she never gets any physic. The others would soon be dead but for physic. They throw their meat (not from inflammation of the crop however), refuse it frequently, and bait furiously, although tame. ‘Tigress,’ I am glad to find, has not very much the matter with her. I long for the rainy season. I think I shall go on leave to the hills on the 23rd July. “TI have not mentioned hoods. Indian hoods have no ties; they are very nice hoods— most excellent for flying a hawk ‘out of the hood;’ but a hawk must never be allowed to pull off her hood, even once, for some two months, or I should think no hawk would keep one of these native hoods on her head a moment when put on a block. They are far more easy for a hawk to feed through, not that I consider that much of an advantage. I think it a very bad plan to allow hawks to feed through their hoods after they are broken, or unless there is some necessity for it. It makes them pull and bite your glove in a tiresome, foolish manner. I should be for HAWKING IN INDIA. 317 using Indian hoods in England, on those hawks which do not throw them off. They are lighter than ours. I decidedly think the absence of bands is a very great advantage. The hood goes farther back under the falcon’s chin, and leaves the upper part of her head more uncovered; it is something in this shape*, very much bossed out at the eyes, and the plume is stuck right at the x back, which, at first, had an ugly appearance to me, but I now am used to it; as also to the handling of it, which at first I found rather difficult. “ Natives always carry a falcon on the right hand. “Winged game for hawking and shooting also abounds: partridges, black and grey; peacocks; quail; wild ducks and snipe; geese; herons; cranes ; curlew; white herons; egrets; bitterns ; night-herons; plover, &c. I am sorry to find Mag. is never seen, but hawking him could last but a very short time in the year if he were; and none but old hawks could be used, as no young or old passage-tiercels would wait on for a magpie two months after their capture. ** Hawking in this country has suffered a very severe * The original sketch was unfortunately too indistinct to copy, and consequently all that could be done was to represent an Indian hood from the Punjab. This hood however has two ties, but its shape is exactly that of the original drawing which was so obscure in its details. From the text we may infer that the ties are done away with altogether in some districts of India, —F, H, Satvin. 318 FALCONRY. blow by the recent mutiny, as you may imagine, — perhaps not so great as the last war inflicted on the hawking in Europe; but the demand for falcons in the great cities, Lucknow and Delhi, Cawnpore, &c., has dwindled to nothing. I was the only person to whom falcons were brought last season at Lucknow. Formerly, I am told, so lately as two years ago, not less than 200 peregrines were disposed of every year in Lucknow. “ Probably somewhere about this number came to Delhi, Cawnpore, and Benares. Now the bird- catchers do not catch them unless specially ordered to do so, as they have no earthly use for them and cannot dispose of them. This is rather lucky, how- ever, for a poor man like me: my hawks cost me nothing, or next to nothing; and I have a large choice, by catching more than I want, and turning out those I do not approve of. *T shall end by a few remarks on the sport itself. Hawking in India, although it sounds very well when you hear that one can get any number of hawks, and kill herons, black curlew, cranes, &c., is, I have come to the conclusion, on the whole, inferior to hawking in Britain. Many, I have no doubt, would not think so; but I cannot get over the climate. It is true, I see a few days’ most brilliant sport, and some days in the cold weather you can work all day, but you can- not take the hard exercise,—the atmosphere and country are not so enjoyable as in England. HAWKING IN INDIA. 319 “A goshawk, properly speaking, is not fit to fly much after the lst of March or before the middle of November,—that is to say, to kill handsomely hares, peacocks, &c. She will go on early and late at partridges, voila tout, in April, but the greatest care must be taken of her. Again; with a peregrine there is such a variety of nasty troublesome birds she can so easily take, that your sport is very frequently spoiled. If a peregrine once takes to killing crows you had better get rid of her. Paddy birds, and minors, and doves, and parrots are eternally in the way,—ducks also. ‘Tigress’ took to killing ducks a good deal. Luckily, she is such a fast falcon that it did not much signify; but many hawks are lost by flying out of the hood slap at a flight of ducks. These take a falcon half a mile, we'll say; she puts them into a pond; she is a passage-hawk. As she recovers from her stoop which she made at them over the water, which foiled her, she sees others; before get- ting a sight of the lure, away she goes again, perhaps with the same result; and a third time kills, goodness knows where! “ One day’s absence in India is the certain loss of a lately caught passage-hawk,—she can so easily kill. Only the Par Sal hawks, as the natives called the in- termewed hawks, are to be trusted. I have only one, —the Begum’s: she will wait on and kill a wild duck, or kill a heron; but she is much inferior to ‘ Tigress,’ though she is a very good falcon. 320 FALCONRY. A New SwIveEt. B a. > 20 30 c d ui 4. Swivel complete. B. In its four parts detached, a@ in figure B is a small flat bar of brass, about 14 in. long, with three holes punched in it. (12 3)bded are three round bars of brass, about 1} in. long, each having a ring at one end, and a knob at the other. “When put together, figure a, the two right and left ones, as 6 and d, should have their rings and knobs on the same sides as each other of the bar aandc; the centre one must be reversed. To the ring of ¢ is affixed the hawk’s leash, to the rings of 6b and d the hawk’s jesses. The holes in the bar should allow the rods of bed to play very easily from knob to ring. ‘ Inconvenience of course attends the fastening and unfastening the jesses to the rings of b and d; this is the only difficulty.” I have no doubt you will find a way to manage it; otherwise this swivel is perfection.” The following paper is from the pen of Capt. Salvin: “ MANAGEMENT OF Hawks At tHe Camps.—Hawk- ‘ing is such a fine manly sport, and is so particularly g y 8p P HAWES AT THE CAMPS. 321 adapted to a military life, that we hope to see it taken up by officers; and this we may reasonably expect, since there are now some keen and good falconers in the army, who must give others a taste for it. As we have had some experience as to the management of hawks in our camps of Aldershot, the Curragh, and Shorncliffe, &c., where they must be more or less exposed, and have to ‘rough it’ like everything else, perhaps a few hints may prove ac- ceptable. The two great evils to be avoided are wind and sun. For the first evil, observe which direction the wind generally blows from, and cut it off by erecting a wall of canvass supported by stakes, from the top of which stakes run out ropes, and peg them down tight, as an additional support. Hawks should be taken in at night at our camps during the winter. If at any time of the year the weather is very severe —that is, if it is too hot or too cold, or too wet or too windy for hawks to be exposed to it, we should advise their being taken in even during the day. When taken in they are to be placed upon the perch. If it should bea very hot day they would be cooler hooded, with the windows thrown open, but generally it is better to keep them unhooded in the dark. A window is easily made dark by covering it with a frame of wood, to which must be nailed some of that oil-cloth which is used for table covers. This frame may be easily fastened by means of leather hinges, and a wooden catch or button. It should be so con- es aoe 322 FALCONRY. trived that it will not interfere with opening the window. To keep the mews clean, cover the floor with fresh clean sawdust, and place sheets of news~ paper (supplement to the Times) over that portion where the mutes will fall. Little stones put upon the paper will keep it from moving. The paper can be burnt, and fresh put down as it may be required, Though goshawks, from their being so hardy, may be kept out both night and day in most weathers, they must occasionally be taken in when the weather is very severe. When this is the case it is better to put them in a stable upon the bow-perch, with plenty of straw round it to save their feathers, or if this cannot be done, hood them, and place them with their tails inwards upon the box-cadge. A ‘hot meal? should occasionally be allowed your hawks; and, as you may wish to save your pigeons, which are ex- pensive household goods, you may economise in this way. In every regiment there are to be found men who are fond of field sports, even in the humblest branches, and for a slight reward and the loan of a steel trap or two, &e., they are delighted to trap you rats, mice, sparrows, &c, Then, again, rat and rabbit catchers often visit our camps, and are glad to sell both their live and dead stock. ‘The little staff gun,’ sold by Messrs. Hancock, Bridge-end-street, Newcastle-on- Tyne, is most useful to the falconer, especially at the camps, where it is a great help to the larder. For in- stance at Aldershot (the worst camp for hawking), this little gun is invaluable to the falconer, for many rooks HAWKS AT THE CAMPS. 323 will gain the trees, in which case it is better to shoot them with the gun whilst they are kept in the tree for fear of the hawk; you thus get food for the hawk, and he is not disgusted at missing his quarry. If the trees are near or down wind, you may generally anticipate the rooks going there, and therefore it is better to be there before the hawk “ leaves the hand.” Though this gun will only carry shot some fifteen or twenty paces, it is a deadly weapon for small birds and for rats, which are generally found about camps. You can never make hawks too public, since ignorant people will kill them. You should therefore put out notices about them, and these notices should be sent to the canteens; and this should be occasionally repeated, as when a new regiment comes in. It may be as well to observe that at the Curragh tiercels will be required for magpie-hawking; and at Shorncliffe you may fly tiercels at magpies and partridges (having of course obtained leave) ; but at Aldershot you have no quarry but rooks, and therefore you require nothing but falcons. We have found it an excellent plan to put out damaged corn in open places in order to bring up the rooks, Some would imagine that the camp itself would interfere with the flight, but it is not the case — indeed, some of the finest flights we have ever seen have been amongst the huts of the north camp. We have seen as many as fifty or sixty stoops at a strong old rook, and we well recollect — and hundreds must remember it too — that on one occa~ x2 324 FALCONRY. sion the rook and falcon ‘ Assegai’ mounted all’ but out of sight; from which immense height both came down amongst the lines of the 36th Regt., and at the next stoop the quarry was taken upon the roof of a hut, to the delight of every one. A horseman is neces- sary, to keep dogs and men off the hawk when he kills. “In concluding these hasty remarks upon hawking at the camps, we must observe that there could scarcely be a better place for lark-hawking than Aldershot; for though birds in general are very scarce, larks abound in every direction.” It is time to bring these chapters toaclose. Iam sure I do so unwillingly. Their first form of pub- lication, in a periodical, is one which suits my taste, and I certainly had some kind readers. I hope to have some kind readers still. Many of my old friends will, I think, meet me in the pages of this book, and I may perhaps hope for some new ones. Collected papers are certainly more convenient for reference than the odds and ends which one snips and shears out piecemeal; and mine have lately had great ad- vantages — as mentioned in the Preface — from the experience of Captain Salvin. It is difficult to say “Goodbye!” but it must be said sooner or later; and I leave all my readers with thanks which I do not know how to express, but I am quite sure that they are not the less sincere because they are not long and not eloquent. PEREGRINE. FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. CORMORANT FISHING. FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. — ITS CONNEXION WITH CHINA.— MASTER OF THE ROYAL CORMORANTS IN ENGLAND.—THE DUTCH APPEAR TO HAVE PRESERVED A KNOWLEDGE OF THIS MODE OF FISHING, — ISAAC WALTON. Tue most ardent lovers of the rod cannot, we trust, begrudge a little cormorant-fishing during the heat of summer, when fishing with the rod is impossible. To such as possess a good reach of river, or who can get leave for an occasional day’s fishing with these birds, it will be found a very delightful summer’s amusement; and as it comes in just at the time when most rural sports are at a stand still, it de- serves some encouragement, particularly when carried on by sportsmen and gentlemen who will not abuse it. Should this little treatise fall into the hands of those who generously invited me to fish their waters some years ago in the northern counties, I take this opportunity of thanking them for their kindness and liberality, through which I derived so much amusement myself, and which, I believe, "4 328 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. afforded equal gratification to many hundreds who witnessed this novel and curious mode of fishing. The cormorant (Graculus carbo) is too well known for me to dwell upon its natural history, and as to its habits they will be described as I proceed, At present I am somewhat in the dark as to the early history of cormorant-fishing. Probably our first acquaintance with it was obtained from the works of the first Jesuit missionaries who visited China. This ingenious method of catching fish was most likely invented by that nation, and must be of very great antiquity, if we may judge by the representation in old China-ware* and other Chinese illustrations. Mr. Fortune, who travelled in China _after our first war with that country, 1842, mentions fishing with cormorants, and we have met with .others who have seen it about Foo-chow-foo, at the ‘mouth of the river. It appears to be most practised in the north of China, in the shallow (and probably hard-bottomed) lakes about Shanghai, where the birds are much prized when well trained. There was a “Master of the Royal Cormorants”f in the * We have seen cormorant-fishing represented upon some ancient china cups at Leagram Hall, Lancashire, the seat of J. Weld, Esq. t Ifthe Exchequer Records were not destroyed in the great fire of London, a research amongst their pages would probably throw some light upon the subject. All that is at present known rests upon the authority of Pennant, who tells us “that Whitelock kept cormorants for fishing ; that he had them ‘manned’ like hawhs, and taught ‘to come to the hand.’ The best he had were presented to ‘him by Mr. Wood, ‘ Master 6f the Cormoratits’ to Charles LL” ~° aoa ISAAC WALTON. 329 reign of Charles I. This office and the amusement seem to have perished altogether in this country during the civil wars which disturbed the reign of that unfortunate monarch. It would appear that the Dutch, who for ages have been falconers and bird fanciers, have retained some knowledge of it, for I know of two instances of cormorants having been brought to this country from Holland, where they had been trained. In one of these my friend, E. C. Newcome, Esq., of Feltwell Hall, Norfolk, brought over a trained cormorant on his return from the Loo Hawking Club in 1846. Mr. New- come’s country was not suited to the amusement, and little was done; but his introduction of the sport (which for years I had contemplated) deter- mined me on trying it. In the summer of 1847 I received a young untrained cormorant from Rotter- dam, which a member of the Loo Club brought over. I knew very little about training the bird, but with perseverance and my knowledge of falconry I even- tually succeeded, and as he became such an extra- ordinary fisher, I named him “Isaac Walton,” in honour of that bewitching author upon the pisca- tory a art. 330 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. CHAP. IL, WHERE TO OBTAIN THE YOUNG ONES. — REARING THEM. — THE SHED, YARD, TANK OR POND.—DAILY MANAGEMENT, TuE cormorant is a common bird, and may easily be procured from the nest about July in any part of our rocky coasts.* They should not be taken too young, for they are then very delicate; and perhaps the best time is when they are sufficiently covered with feathers to be nearly fit to fy. They must then bé placed upon short straw, under a shed facing the south. The straw may be made into a sort of nest by encircling it with large stones, which -will give them the choice of either perching upon the stones or lying upon the straw. They are great eaters at all times, but whilst their feathers are growing they are particularly voracious. At this period they should be ‘fed three times a day upon fish, and not be allowed much at the last meal, as a full one at night, when “ On the Fern Islands, which are flat, they build upon the ground, We are happy to say the trustees of Bamborough Castle (to which trust the islands belong) have the good taste to preserve the sea birds. How different from Flamborough Head, the Bass Rock, and other places, where they are disgustingly shot down by hundreds, just to gratify that morbid taste for destroying birds which is so fearfully on the increase ! REARING AND MANAGEMENT. 331 the birds are so highly fed, is apt to bring on apo- plexy. If a cormorant is unwell, it is probably from indigestion ; therefore you cannot do wrong in giving him powdered rhubarb, two or three grains, within a piece of food. When full grown, cut all the pri- maries of the left wing within about two inches of the bone, to prevent the bird flying. The reason for not cutting the right wing is that cormorants have frequently to be carried like hawks upon the fist, and the right wing, if cut, would scratch the face when they “bate.” There is no doubt but that wild cor- morants might be trapped and trained, and prove excellent birds. Colonel Montague, the naturalist, mentions one that he tamed: and if wild hawks can be trained by falconers, why should not wild cormo- rants ? These birds differ much in their tempers, some being most spiteful and savage, as well as shy and disobedient in the field, whilst others are just the reverse. They are very sagacious, knowing the places where they have caught fish and are likely to meet with them again, &. They are also capable of great affection. Honest “Isaac Walton” was parti- cularly fond of his master, and singularly enough he would not allow any one else to approach without showing fight. When angry, the cry somewhat re- sembles the gobble of a turkey, and when pleased, it is a loud guttural sound, like “haw, haw!” Cormorants should have a long shed to retire under 332 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. ~ at pleasure. They are fond of perching or standing upon arock in a commanding situation, and therefore they should have a rockery, mixed with roots of trees and branches, in the centre of the yard. Asa pond, or rather a large tank sunk in the ground, is very necessary for them to bathe in, and must be kept very clean, it should be so contrived that the fresh water can be let in and the foul let out at pleasure. The tank should be made of thick planks of wood, two feet deep, by ten long and four broad, well covered with pitch. The floor of the shed should be covered with litter, which must be frequently changed; and each bird should have a stone to perch upon, at such a distance from his neighbour’s that he cannot bite him. The yard also should be daily cleaned and covered with sand; and the “guano,” which is not to be despised by the agriculturist, may be saved. TRAINING, 333 CHAP. III. TRAINING CORMORANTS. — APPARATUS USED IN CORMORANT FISH- ING.— DAILY MANAGEMENT. You must fix your cormorants’ dirner-hour so that it shall not be too late in the day; for as they always take their bath after dinner, there would not be time for them to get dry. before going to roost were the meal late. Teach them at that hour— which must be kept exactly — to come to the call and to the rattling of the tin box you carry their food in. This may be called “making them to the lure.” As they are clumsy* birds on land, those that require lifting to your arm (it is a good thing to accustom them to be lifted) are to be laid gently hold of by the head, neck, or beak, the forefingers being passed down the arch of the neck to support it. Indeed, whilst training them, and afterwards, this is the best and safest way of lifting them up and of putting them down; in doing which throw them * My cormorants used the bills like parrots, for pulling themselves up banks, &c. 334 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. also a little forward, at the same time drawing them slightly towards yourself, which will break the force of their coming to the ground. If this (rather ex- traordinary manceuvre) is not attended to they are apt to pitch upon, and to break up, their tails, which it is a great object to keep as perfect as pos- sible, being of the greatest assistance to the bird in diving. Cormorants’ feathers will come again, so you may sometimes pull out a feather, but they will not imp. Hot water will sometimes straighten them.* You must now begin to “carry” them for two or three hours every day for nearly a week, just as you do hawks, with this difference, that in the one case you are constantly hooding and unhooding the bird, whilst here you have to be hooded yourself ; that is, you must wear a fencing mask, otherwise the bird will take out your eye to a certainty, to say nothing of biting your face. Your ears and hands may not escape, as you cannot cover themf, but should they suffer, the cut, being a very clean one, soon heals. By “carrying” they see new objects, and as they at the same time acquire confidence in * In drawing a feather out, let an assistant hold the root, whilst you pull it out with pliers, t Spirits of turpentine is the best cure for such cuts. It acts thus: The oil forms a coating and keeps out the air, whilst the spirit eva- porates and cools the part, CARRYING. 335 you, it tends wonderfully to tame them. Some will be much more wild and savage than others, but “nil desperandum” must be your motto; and be sure to turn your face to them whenever they strike the mask, which will soon convince them that the jar it gives them is more disagreeable to themselves than to you. “Carrying” is useless unless it is con-= tinued, and as it is tedious work where you have several birds, an assistant who can be fully trusted must be procured. It is conducted thus :— Being masked, take up the bird, and having placed it upon -your hand* put your thumb upon its right foot. Whenever it bates from your fist hold it if possible by your thumb, then by yielding a little to it, and with a peculiar backward jerk of the arm, and at the same time balancing the bird, it will regain its seat upon your hand. Whilst thus carrying it about, oc- casionally offer it a morsel of fish from your tin box, which, if not too sulky, it will eat, Such.attentions, especially if offered after it has tried to bite you, will gain the bird’s affections, which lie more in the stomach than in the heart. Whilst training you must keep its appetite sharp-set. The next thing to be done, after having made cormorants to “ the lure” and to “the fist,” is to enter them in a large tank, * Cormorants can throw back the hind toe of each foot, which enables them to perch, 336 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. without their straps (which shall be explained) at live fish, a good supply of which you must have netted for this purpose. After repeating this lesson two or three times put leather straps, five inches long, and nearly half an inch broad, with a small one-tongued buckle, upon their necks, like a horse’s lip-strap. The cesophagus or gullet, having a bottom formed by this strap and being very elastic, is turned into a capacious bag for holding the fish.* Feed them, with the straps on, in their yard. This will teach them to hold their fish, for whenever they disgorge it, it will be stolen by another bird, and in their eagerness to be fed and to hold it they will allow you to handle them. This tantalizing ordeal should be repeated three or four times. The birds will be now ready “to enter.” For this end choose a small moor-side stream which you know to be full of trout. Trout are slimy, and consequently better than scaly fish to enter the birds at, for the scales irritate the gullet or pouch, which at first the birds do not like. If you have an old steady cormorant (“a make bird”) it will save you much trouble, for it will both teach the young ones to hold the fish they catch and to come out of the water. It is often no easy matter to catch young cor- * The Greenlanders float their fishing-nets with them. NOOSE JESSES. 337 morants, and much tact is required in wading round them, and putting out your arm, or the whip, on the side on which they are likely to pass you, &c., which experience and patience alone can teach. When you make a bird disgorge always give it a small piece of fish for its reward. Cormorants are lazy birds, and must be made to dive by cracking a whip, and by throwing soft earth at them, which frightens them. If an old bird tries the water well, and then flaps and washes itself, you may rest assured there are no fish. When once entered keep them at work daily for a week, and as itis of great import- ance to tire them well, choose a small rough stony- bedded stream, that by walking from one deep to another they may be well fatigued, which will greatly help to tame them, and is an excellent prescription for any other wild subject. When only one cormorant is kept, “ noose jesses” are put over each foot, to which jesses a cord is attached, to serve as a leash, and the bird is carried either on foot or on horseback to and from the field, &c., upon the fist*, just as we carry hawks. When several cormorants are used, they must be carried in a palanquin, which must have a separate chamber for each bird, otherwise they would fight and injure each other. It will be necessary here to describe * That part of the arm upon which you carry the bird should be guarded with leather, in the shape of a gauntlet with the hand - cut off. Z 338 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. the palanquin. The framework of this conveyance must be of light wood, covered with tarpauling; the cabins into which it is divided must have a door on each side, opposite each other, that the bird may go in or out on either side. These doors are of tar- Pauling, and open half-way up the framework, like an apron, being well stayed to prevent their slitting up. ‘They are fastened at the bottom, on each side, by leather straps and one-tongued buckles. The four legs of the palanquin must be long enough to allow of their passing through openings in a thin wooden platform, which forms the bottom or floor, and is quite separate when the iron pins which pass through holes in each leg are withdrawn. It is thus easily washed and kept clean. The palanquin is to be ventilated and kept cool by means of holes along the sides near the top, and by an opening round the bottom, which also allows the birds’ tails to come through. The palanquin should be 2 feet wide by 5 long and 2 deep. Whilst fishing down a river, the birds are to be rested and worked in their turns, and the tired ones carried outside the palanquin, where they will spread their wings and dry themselves. A sponge must be kept in a pocket at one end, for the purpose of keeping the top clean. The poles by which it is carried must be flat, and in order to pack in less room they should have a hinge in the middle. They require to be well padded where they rest upon the men’s shoulders. FISHING BOOTS. 339 4 AAA, the four cabins. BBBB,their doors. cc cc, the straps by which the doors are fastened. op, a light wooden floor, at the corners of which are four openings through which the palanquin legs pass, and the whole is made firm by the iron tongues which pass through its holes. EEE, four strong broad straps, with roller- buckles with one tongue, by which the poles are fastened to the palanquin. The middle straps are to pass over the pole hinges, by which the hinges are prevented from moving. A leather washer must be nailed on between the division, to prevent the hinges from being strained. ¥ ¥F F F, padding on the poles, to protect the carriers’ shoulders.* Leather fishing-boots will be found to stand the hard work of climbing up banks, running, jumping, and bushing through rough places, better than Indian- rubber. In order to change your boots from one foot to the other, and thus prevent wearing them down on one side, they must not be made “rights and lefts.” There should be rough nails in them, to save the wearer from slipping from stones, &c. To pre- vent the legs of the fishing-boots from coming down, * To take off the ugly appearance of the palanquin, it ae be ornamented with a little colour, @ la Chinese. Z2 3840 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. I find it an excellent plan to have a single-tongued buckle about the middle of the outside of each boot, from which a strap with a loop is to be run upon another passing round the waist above the hips. Long warm thick stockings should be worn with the boots. A tin box, say 4 inches wide by 3 broad, and 3 deep, and made in the shape of half a circle, so as to fit the side, should be worn in front, upon this hip belt, for the purpose of holding rewards or lures, consisting of pieces of fish, of which more hereafter. This box can be easily run upon the belt by having a loop of tin on the flat side. The master of the cormorants should also carry a fishing creel or pan- nier, and perhaps the best costume he could wear is a sailor’s jacket and shepherd’s plaid trowsers. I shall now wind up this chapter with a few observa~ tions upon the daily management of cormorants. Although as active and swift as swallows below water, they are, as I said before, very awkward upon land, and in this artificial state they are apt to break their feathers, particularly their stiff whalebone-like tails. This is to be avoided as much as possible. It is advisable, therefore, to keep their larder out of sight, for their endeavours to get to it would cause them to pitch upon their tails and break them.* After the * Imping does not answer with cormorants, for their tails are constantly used, as in the woodpecker, &c., to balance their bodies: and this strain upon such coarse feathers is too much for the needles to bear. I think they might be mended, as the Eastern falconers DAILY MANAGEMENT, 341 young birds are full grown, they are fed but once a day, about noon. The feeding and conditioning of cormorants is a very important duty, in order to insure health, strength, and obedience in the field. Like hawks, ‘they must have a full “gorge” on Saturday, with very little on Sunday, so as to create a sharp ap- petite for Monday. If they are not in full work they should be sparingly fed for two days in suc- cession —say a quarter of a feed the first day and a little more the next. They should not be fasted longer than this. On the third day they should be well fed, otherwise, by getting them too low you may sicken them. Good condition and health all depends upon judicious feeding. Cormorants will eat’ meat greedily*, as sheep’s and beast’s livers, hearts, rabbits, &c.; but meat brings on disease resembling scrofula, which attacks their joints as well as their interiors. Fish of every kindf is the repair hawk’s feathers, thus : —Cut the bird’s feather where it is hol- low, then put a feather down the hollow, and, having passed a fine needle and thread two or three times through and round the shaft of both feathers where they are joined, tie it fast and cut off the ends. * T have frequently caught water rats with cormorants, and upon one occasion I witnessed one take a water, or moor-hen whilst it was diving. The cormorant, however. did not detain it long, for, appearing annoyed with its feathers, it let go the poor bird, which lost no time in making off. { At present it is not ascertained whether fresh-water fish will keep them in health, or whether it is necessary to feed them chiefly upon sea fish. Z3 342 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. best, because the natural food of these birds. Per- haps the safest way to feed cormorants, in order to prevent their biting each other or breaking their feathers, is from the fist, to which some will spring like hawks; but when they decline jumping to it they must be lifted, as described at the beginning of Chap. ITI., or you may throw them the meat, which they will catch with great dexterity. After dinner, in lieu of taking a nap, they take their bath, and then, having ascended some elevated position, they flap and dry themselves, and finish their toilette by oiling their feathers from the oil gland, which I have repeatedly seen them and hawks do when upon my fist. “Old Isaac” did this so deliberately, that you could actually see the “ma- cassar” squeezed out; and after applying it with his bill, he rubbed it in with his throat FIELD MANAGEMENT, 343 CHAP. IV. FIELD MANAGEMENT.— CONCLUDING REMARES UPON THE OTTER. Lit most sports, cormorant fishing requires a pecu- liar country and certain circumstances, in order to enjoy it in its fullest excellence. The essence of a. fishing-place is one consisting of short deeps, clean sloping sides, gravel beds, and streams or in other words, a brisk wadeable river or brook, which has generally these requisites*; and lastly, there should be plenty of fish of a certain class, upon which I shall presently offer some remarks. Weather, too, is an object which must not be lost sight of, particularly in making an appointment for “the meet,” inasmuch as heavy rains might sud- denly come on, and so swell and discolour ‘the water as to prevent the birds from working or seeing the fish. With regard to fish, it is necessary to observe that certain fish cannot be managed by the birds, and, in fact, it is running a great risk to attempt it. Perch, and all such fish as have a similar back fin * They have not as yet been tried in the sea or upon lakes. Za 344 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS, cannot be disgorged, and if the bird is not speedily allowed to swallow them by taking off the strap, there is great danger of the fin lacerating the pouch. Cormorants are so fond of eels, that where they are plentiful they will catch nothing else, prefer- ring them to all other fish; nor can they take large eels on account of the great difficulty they have in killing them. Eels, when small, often pass into the stomach, which of course makes the birds still more independent. In short, where eels abound, cormorants “run riot” and are unmanageable, and soon get tired from the eels repeatedly escaping by riggling up again out of the pouch. It is quite clear, then, that where such fish are it is impossible to use cormorants. Ponds and mill-dams, and all water having, like these, a muddy bottom, cannot be fished successfully, because the fish know their green-eyed foes by instinct*, and all fish, even trout, will disappear in the mud in order to hide them- selves. “ Wearing,” or “ fendering ” (as it is some- times called), weeds, roots, walling, cracks in rocks, and large stones, will afford so much shelter to fish, that where these exist no success can be relied upon. Having considered everything necessary for fishing, I will now prepare for starting. The first thing to * T have frequently seen fish throw themselves upon land to save themselves from a cormorant; and upon one occasion, in the river Wear, county of Durham, I witnessed an eel throw itself a foot out of a stream, like a trout after a fly, to avoid the fatal rush of one of these birds. DISGORGING. 345 be done is to put on the neck-straps, which are not to be too tight, then put the birds into the palan- quin and send them with two trusty men to the place of meeting.* Arrived at the brook or small river to be fished, turn out one or two of the birds, according to the size of the stream, for like dogs they assist each other. Whenever you come to a likely place where you wish them to dive, crack a whip, and cry “Get away, ah!” or throw a little light soil at them. Young birds are shy of being taken when they have caught a fish, particularly if it is not a large one, when it will give them little trouble to hold it. of As we before observed, it is sometimes a good plan to wade round the bird in order to get it out of the water. If it is inclined to turn back and pass you, you may cause it to take to the land by putting out your arm, or holding out the whip, or hy throwing a stone near it. When you approach it to disgorge, you must put away your whip, go up to it quietly and lay hold of the beak, at the same time that you must pass your two forefingers along the arch of the neck to support it and lift it gently to a stone; next, open the mouth with one hand, whilst with the other gently press upon, and a little below, the fish, so as to push it upwards, waiting for an instant for the bird’s assistance, which it will give you upon * A little short straw should be put into each chamber of the palanquin, for the birds to sit upon. 346 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. finding it cannot retain the fish. After thus taking a fish from it give it a small fish as a reward; it en- courages it to allow it to take the fish you lure it with. There cannot be a better lure than a minnow or a small dead eel. When you perceive the birds are wet and tired with fishing, place them upon stones or upon the palanquin, where they will dry them- selves. Whilst they are thus resting bring out your fresh birds, and thus work'and rest them by turns. After fishing feed them up, and if you have far to go you had better dry them outside the palanquin, as you move off the ground, for they cannot dry inside. About four birds is a manageable number, and for these you require an assistant to act as “whipper-in,” and to carry the fishing creel. Two more men are necessary to carry the palanquin, but they may gene- rally be engaged in “the field” before “ throwing off.” Of course it is easier for the birds to go down than to fish up a river or brook, and with four cormorants you may fish for some hours and for some miles, provided the water is not too cold, and all the time you keep moving on. When they come to a likely deep they will turn and fish it thoroughly, and they will frequently turn up stream after a fish, but generally when in a stream (par- ticularly a strong rapid one) they keep moving down, striking at fish as they pass. It is extraordinary how wonderfully active and rapid these curious birds are wnder water; and their ACTIVITY OF THE BIRD. 347 cunning, which improves by experience, is also asto- nishing. You may observe them look up every rat- hole and under every shelving bank as they proceed down a stream. Many fish are caught in these places; but they catch fish—even grayling (which are swifter than trout), by fairly swimming or coursing them down in the open water. If they know they have a chance of getting a fish from under a large stone (no matter how deep the water is)*, they will repeatedly dive until they have accomplished it. Fish appear to get “blown,” as it were, when pursued by these birds; for they can only go for some fifteen to thirty yards.| The fish that escape generally do so by doubling. Upon catching a fish, which they usually do across the middle, but occasionally by the very tip of the tail, they come to the surface in order to swallow it. If it is a large fish, they work it round with the beak until the head is in the right direction, when they gulp it down head first. Should the fish be a light one, they toss it into the air, and catch it most dexterously head foremost. I have often seen fish escape that had only been caught by a fin or tail, and I have seen the cormorant dive and retake them like lightning. With the strap on, a two-pound fish * In deep water both cormorants and otters descend and ascend in a spiral or corkscrew direction, as falcons “ mount.” + Lonce witnessed “Isaac Walton” exhaust a large trout by spin- ning round it like a top, with his neck and tail turned inwards, the better to confine the fish within the circle, the fish of course making every effort, but in vain, to escape. 348 FISHING WITH CORMORANTS. is about as much as they can manage, though I once saw two cormorants in a rapid stream seize a grilse* of perhaps five or six pounds weight; but he escaped. Clear water is greatly in favour of spectators, as they can see every movement of the birds and fish ; but it is not necessary for the birds, for some of my best days’ fishing have been in dark moss-water. I have also taken a good deal of fish in water that was still muddy after a flood; but I have frequently seen it too muddy. During the three years I kept cormorants I caught a great variety of fish with them; indeed, I might almost say that I have taken all the fresh-water fish from a minnowf toa pike. In brackish water near the sea I have frequently taken flooks.t I will con- clude this chapter by giving the results of a fishing tour, and of two or three of my best days’ fishings. In the summer of 1849 I made a most delightful tour§ in the northern counties with four cormorants, * In January, 1850, a cormorant was shot by the Hon. W. Fraser, in Beauly River, which liad swallowed a 4 Ib. grilse, of 22 inches in length. Part of the fish was out of the bird’s mouth, ¢ Trolling baits may be easily obtained by means of a cormorant ; and as small fish are caught uninjured, a pond may be stocked if you disgorge them quickly and put them into water, &c. } T have met with an instance of these flat fish living in a fresh- water pond, into which they had been put by the owner, § When travelling, cormorants may be secured by “ noose-jesses” and leashes, and placed, like hawks, upon stones upon a lawn or some enclosed place, or they may be put into a loose box, the floor of which should be covered with straw, and there should be stones A FISHING TOUR. 349 upon which occasion I took in twenty-eight days 1,200 good sized fish. I was kindly invited by several fish- ing clubs, as Driffield, Kilnsey, &c.; and it appears from my Journal that I had some good sport at Driffield in those streams which had no weed, but the main stream was too weedy.* .At the Kilnsey club, which I visited in the summer of 1848, I had two days’ fishing. On the best day I “threw off” in the Arncliffe Brook, and fished it and the River Whalfe to the first falls. As I was anxious to know what amount of fish could be taken where they were plen- tiful, I fished for seven hours before the birds were completely done, when the results were forty-five fine trout, weighing twenty pounds. ‘I obtained about this time a couple of days’ fishing at Whitewell, through the liberality of Col. Townley. There had been a fresh, which had brought up the sea fish, called locally “sprods :” they are silvery fish, of about three quarters of a pound weight. “The meet” was well attended, and the success nearly equalled that at Kilnsey ; but on this occasion very few trout were caught, for the birds seemed to prefer the sprods,— in which they showed their taste, for I certainly never eat more delicious fish than these proved to.be, for for the birds to sit upon; and as they are so apt to fight, it is advis- able to make the place as dark as possible. * In some of the deep holes at Driffield, where the water is very clear, it was curious to observe what little notice the very large trout took of the cormorant, whilst those up to a pound or more darted in all directions. 7 350 FISHING WITH OTTERS. we had them for dinner at that romantic little inn, where a large party assembled. I will now draw these chapters to a close with a few remarks upon the otter. This animal has fre- quently been trained for fishing, both in this country and the East. The native fishermen on the Indus are said to employ a small species of otter for driving fish into their nets, and also to catch them. In order to prevent their biting, and consequently spoiling the fish, leather cups are strapped over their canine teeth. An otter which it is intended to tame should be taken young, and confined in a yard well secured _ over both the top and sides with wirework, contain- ing a pond, a shed with dry straw facing the sun, and a hollow trunk of a tree into which he may creep and rub himself, as they delight in doing after swimming. The otter trainer must be careful to observe the various cries of the animal, in order not to irritate its temper, as it has three distinct modes of express- ing its feelings. Thus when pleased it whistles, when suspicious of danger it blows through the valves of the nose, when vexed it growls. It is therefore only advisable to play with it when it shows itself to be amiable by its whistling. Otters are particularly playful after feeding, and it. is quite a pretty sight to see them play with a ball, for even on land their activity is wonderful. FISHING WITH OTTERS. 351 In 1848 I succeeded in taming a young otter, which I called “ Diver,” so perfectly, that he would follow me into the country like a dog*, and jump into my lap to sleep. At first he was an awkward swimmer, his early education being defective, owing to his separation from his parents, and I found it was necessary to be cautious with him, as cold water at first produced fits. Knowing that otters can scent fish under water, and even smell eels, &c. when in the mud, I taught him to dive by sinking meat with a plumb-line, which he never failed in finding. As the otter cannot eat a fish of any size when swimming, it must come to land to do so; its master must then approach it quietly, and taking hold of its long and strong tail (called by otter hunters “ the potter ”), hold him with one hand, whilst he takes the fish from him with the other, immediately rewarding him with small pieces of fish, after which he will again take the water in search of more. Otters are par- ticularly fond of salmon, and in some waters a great many may be taken. I need hardly remark that the death-struggle of a large salmon with his foe, in a rapid stream, is a grand and exciting thing to witness. Provided a little sawdust or sand is placed in a corner, the otter will be found a particularly clean animal, having no perceptible smell, which cannot be said of Isaac Walton and Co., who indulge so much * I put a collar and bell upon this otter’s neck, in order to hear. where he was in cover. 352 FISHING WITH OTTERS. in musk, and are not very nice feeders. They are rather delicate animals, and require to be kept warm and dry, to be well fed, and kept as fat as possible. They may be fed upon both fish and flesh, such as rabbits *, rats, birds, &c. Diarrhoea is a complaint to which they are liable, and their daily habit of body must be closely watched, being in a great measure an index to their health. * In severe frosts, when frozen out of rivers, &c., this curious animal, which so much reminds me of the weasel tribe, will take to killing rabbits, water hens, &c.; indeed, there are not many rabbit holes it cannot enter. THE END. LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE Air nL Sea Petes eh ahs Petes pete bras ie 3 sui palaehe ks pein bedact rramigtes