PASSAGE HAWKS 11 



ing her to sleep a wink. And until she has fed keep on at 

 times tempting her to do so. Wild-caught hawks may quite 

 well be kept nearly twenty-four hours without food. Eagles 

 may be kept even for two or three days without much injury ; 

 and goshawks for a day and a half. But twenty-four hours is 

 too long for a very small hawk, which must have been already 

 hungry when she came to the decoy. And if you can feed any 

 hawk soon after her capture, so much the better. Anything 

 like starvation is now completely tabooed by falconers pre- 

 tending to any knowledge of their art. To reduce a hawk 

 while in process of reclamation is no more than you will be 

 obliged to do. For it is hopeless to expect to keep a passager, 

 or indeed any trained hawk, in quite such high condition as a 

 wild hawk keeps herself. But a thin hawk is a disgrace to the 

 trainer. If you cannot reclaim your hawk without submitting 

 her to such hunger as will make her weak and poor, you had 

 better abandon falconry and try some less difficult form of sport. 



Possibly before your hawk will feed, and while you are 

 carrying her, you will find that she wants to cast. With her 

 last meal eaten in freedom, she is pretty sure to have swallowed 

 some castings. Ten to one she has thrown these up before she 

 came to your decoy pigeon. But it is possible she may not. 

 Moreover, if the first hood she wears is an easy one, well cut 

 away at the beak opening, she may cast through the hood. 

 But if she is seen making efforts to cast, and is prevented by 

 the hood from doing so, take her into a nearly dark room or 

 passage. Remove the hood with the fingers and teeth, and, 

 when she has thrown up her casting, slip it on again. Other- 

 wise she may possibly choke herself in the vain attempt to 

 cast. Of course you will not dream of allowing her, for days 

 to come, to eat anything anywhere except on the fist. 



If a wild-caught hawk is so rampageous from the first that 

 she will not stand on the fist at all without jumping off, she 

 must be left on the turf mound, but by no means be allowed to 

 go to sleep. An attendant must be at hand who will effectu- 

 ally prevent this by touching her whenever she seems to be 

 dozing off. A few hours of this stirring-up will make her ready 

 enough to keep quiet on the fist when she has a chance. And 

 a few hours more will make her willing enough to stand still 

 there, even when the fist is moved unsteadily about. 



We will suppose now that the passager has at last fed 

 moderately but unstintingly through the hood upon the fist ; 

 that she can be carried about on it without much risk of 

 bating off; and that she has had no sleep since she was 



