84 FALCONID^E. 



best of the short- winged Hawks ; but its habits, as well as its 

 mode of flying at its game, are very different : it does not 

 stoop to its prey, like most of the Falcons, but glides along 

 in a line after it, and takes it by a mode wdiich, in the lan- 

 guage of falconry, is called raking. The Gos-Hawk is in 

 some esteem among falconers, being flown at Hares, Rabbits, 

 Pheasants, and Partridges. It flies low and fast for a short 

 distance, may be used in an enclosed country, and will even 

 dash through woods after its prey ; but if it does not catch 

 the object, it soon gives up the pursuit, and j)erching on a 

 bough, waits till some new game presents itself, or until the 

 quarry, being pressed by hunger, is induced to move ; and 

 as the Hawk is capable of greater abstinence, it generally 

 succeeds in taking it. Montagu was informed by Colonel 

 Thornton that at Thornville Eoyal, in Yorkshire, he flew a 

 Gos-Hawk at a Pheasant ; but it got into cover, and he 

 lost the Hawk : at ten o'clock next morning the falconer 

 found her, and just as he had lifted her, the Pheasant ran 

 and rose. 



The Gos-Hawk is a rare species in England at the present 

 day, and those that are used for hawking are obtained from 

 the continent ; yet examples have been taken of late years 

 in several counties. Mr. Pemberton Bartlett, in ' The Zool- 

 ogist ' for 1844 (p. 618), notices one recently killed in Kent, 

 and in the same magazine for 1846 (p. 1496) mention is 

 made by Mr. George Horn, of Egham, of one caught at the 

 beginning of that year. In Suft'olk the capture of five ex- 

 amples, and in Norfolk of eleven, has been recorded, mostly 

 within the last few years. One is also said by Mr. Sterland, 

 in his ' Birds of Sherwood Forest,' to have been taken in 

 1848 at Rufford in Nottinghamshire. In Northumberland 

 or the adjacent counties seven examples have been killed, 

 according to various writers. In Scotland at least half-a- 

 dozen have lately occurred from Roxburghshire to the Shet- 

 lands, the particulars of which will be found in Mr. Robert 

 Gray's work, while that gentleman, on the testimony of Mr. 

 Tottenham Lee, has reason to believe that it has even recently 

 bred in Kirkcudbrightshire, as it formerly, almost without 



