96 MR CARR ON THE FLIGHT OF THE PEREGRINE FALCON 



mount with great keenness and resolution. The peregrine, even in 

 a wild state, is not much alarmed at the noise of a gun, and nothing 

 is easier than to make hawks in training altogether indifferent to it. 



This is a digression from the description of the falcon's own free 

 mode of pursuing pigeons, and may seem to be matter only for a fal- 

 coner. The object, however, was to shew how we may contrive with 

 trained falcons to obtain a fair flight at pigeons without resorting to 

 boxes and baskets. To see a fine headlong stoop, or to witness the 

 hawk get the command of her game, and beat it down, ought to sa- 

 tisfy the true admirer of the sport. If the pigeon has dashed into a 

 hedge there let it remain and pscape. The hawk knows that she 

 mastered it in the air, and will be very well pleased with the substi- 

 tute we have got ready to offer her in a fresh killed nestling from 

 the dovecot. 



To have practised this kind of exercise with my own hawks would 

 have been easy. They were always eager to fly at pigeons when an 

 opportunity was offered, but as my object was to make them prefer 

 game, and to wait in the air upon the movements of the dogs and 

 beaters, we never designedly approached a dovecot. One very fine 

 female falcon of the second year (having flown much at liberty dur- 

 ing the summer), would now and then make a swoop at our pigeons, 

 when her blood was up from a recent disappointment after partridge. 

 One day, having driven a partridge into a hedge, not far from the 

 farm-yard, and having thrown herself up into the air (as is always 

 observable when the fatal stroke has been evaded), I saw her 

 mounting up with her breast to the north-wind, instead of wheeling 

 round, and ** waiting on," until the partridge could be again started. 

 It was evident she had something before her, for her training was 

 excellent, and she knew her duty perfectly. She had scarcely reached 

 a good position, when a flight of pigeons appeared, coming down the 

 wind at great speed and making for their dovecot, just as a hare will 

 press on towards a cover in spite of a greyhound slipped to intercept 

 her. 



The falcon hung on the wind till the flock going like lightning 

 had passed under her, when she instantly stooped in the grandest 

 manner, and by the impulse threw herself first in behind them, and 

 then again up aloft, exactly over the foremost birds and completely 

 commanding all and each. She now selected a white pigeon, and 

 descending upon it, down it went into the rough herbage of a hedge, 

 with merely a feather or two grazed from its back and quite unhurt ; 



