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hawk, taken too young even to have once flown on the wing, 
and deprived for ever of the invaluable teaching of her parents, 
is entirely ignorant at first of any single thing she should know 
or do, except to eat meat at the hands of her keeper. She cannot 
even fly, without at least a month’s flying loose, (called flying at 
hack, directly she is fully summed, or feathered.* Considerable 
powers of speed, and the desire, and in time the ability, to prey 
for herself do eventually come to the nestling’s aid. I have never 
however seen or heard of any nestling falcon, however good and 
however prized and successful, whose style of flying and stooping 
came up to those of a wild caught hawk, whilst her powers of foot- 
ing—(hawks all strike and catch with their feet alone, or by blows 
from their powerful and sharp back talons, in the case of falcons 
proper)—are for ever far inferior to those of her better trained, 
and better practised and once wild, congener. So that she, in 
turn, may be compared to a lioness, etc., born in a menagerie, 
Wild falcons, goshawks and sparhawks, are sometimes trapped 
unharmed, if great care is taken, on prey they have killed, 
and so come into our hands. [If their valuable flight feathers 
and tail feathers are not much damaged, their captor deserves 
great praise. I have had three or four wild English peregrines 
thus procured, and have one such now. I have also most grateful 
memories of the services of one such—once an adult female 
peregrine falcon,—wild on the Wiltshire Downs, and who killed 
for me, in the grandest possible style, grouse after grouse daily, 
in September and October, in Northumberland, in a style, from 
a lofty pitch, and with the peculiar stoop, of the wild peregrine. 
* This is usually effected by the young nestlings being provided with 
jesses and a large and heavy bell, large enough to hinder her greatly in 
attempting to take wild quarry. She is then set at liberty in any convenient 
place, where she may be tolerably safe from harm for twenty miles round, 
fed twice daily, and caught up as best she may be when she ceases to “come 
in pretty regularly to evening feed.” I have even hacked hawks from 
Stroud, in the past—absurd as it seems, in the present, time ! —and taken 
them up, after a month’s good hack. I know of no place in England, where 
this can now be done. I have, however, at the present moment, three 
nestling peregrines from Dorset-—now flying loose at hack in the neighbour- 
hood of Thurley, Ireland—(from an old ruin). 
