72 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



man, who is also indulged with a miniature hut of his own, into 

 which he may retreat when terrified, as it is hoped that he soon 

 may be. The eyesight of this tethered spy is so keen that he 

 can descry his enemy the hawk at an incredible distance in the 

 sky. Whenever one is approaching, though far out of range of 

 the sharpest human eye, he begins to exhibit signs of alarm. 

 As the hawk comes nearer he fidgets more and more, glancing 

 nervously — or pointing, as they call it — in the direction of the 

 foe. If the latter still comes nearer, he will cry out in his 

 terror, and finally run cowering under the shelter of his hut. 



Meanwhile the falconer has not been idle. Snatching the 

 turf shutter from the little window behind him, he takes a look 

 through his field-glass in the direction to which the shrike is 

 pointing, searching for the coming hawk as an astronomer does 

 for a lost star. If, on espying it, he judges that it is a peregrine, 

 he sets to work seriously about the main business of the day. 



At some distance from the hut is fixed up a pole with a 

 line — we will call it A — running from the top of it to the hut. 

 To this line, at some yards distance from the pole, is attached 

 a branch line, after the manner of the paternoster used in 

 angling, at the end of which is a live pigeon in jesses. When 

 the line A is slack, the pigeon rests on the ground, or in a hut 

 to which he is at liberty to resort when he likes. But if, by a 

 pull in the falconer's hut, the line A is pulled taut, up goes the 

 pigeon in the air, and flutters about at the end of liis branch 

 line, conspicuous from afar. Often there is a second pole at 

 a like distance from the big hut, but in a rather different 

 direction ; and to this a second line, B, is attached, with a tame 

 tiercel or peregrine of some sort, rigged out in the same way as 

 the pole-pigeon. This hawk may have a handful of straw or 

 worsted fastened to one of his feet, so that he may look as if he 

 had some dead quarry in possession, and serve the better to 

 attract the wild passager. As the shrike points, and the wild 

 hawk is coming up, the falconer works with a will by the two 

 strings A and B at the pole-hawk and the pole-pigeon. But 

 as soon as the passager is nearly overhead, and the shrike has 

 hidden himself, it is time to let loose the pole strings and let 

 the very live lures attached to it also bolt into shelter. 



We now come to another component part of the Dutch 

 hawk-trap. A third line, C, leads from the hut to a small ring- 

 peg in the ground sixty or eighty yards away, passes through 

 it, and a few feet farther on, but at the side, is attached to a 

 live pigeon in a box, out of which it can be pulled by drawing 

 the line. One more particular, and the whole apparatus is 



