124 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



the falconer below pleases to throw out for her a morsel of cold 

 and uninviting food. You will generally find it best to employ 

 with her rather different tactics from those which served for the 

 eyesses. Thus you may call her off to the lure from the other 

 side of a wide moorside, and, as she comes across the heather, 

 contrive that there shall get up out of it a very fast pigeon. 

 On the first occasion it is ten to one that she will start at this 

 from the very moderate height at which she was flying towards 

 you ; but whether she takes the pigeon or not, she will know 

 very well that she ought, for her own advantage, to have been 

 higher when he got up ; and the next time you call her off at a 

 similar place and in a similar way, the odds are that she comes 

 to you higher in the air. A third trial will probably find her 

 higher still, and you may let her make a circle or two before 

 starting the pigeon. When she has once flown a grouse in a 

 somewhat similar way the effect will be still more marked. 

 Do not now dream of lowering her pitch by ever letting her 

 stoop to the lure. Indeed, after the passager is once made to 

 the dead lure, it need scarcely be used at all, except to call the 

 hawk back after unsuccessful flights. 



For the first twelve months you must still be mistrustful of 

 your passager. Some of the old writers advise not to try her 

 at waiting on until she is intermewed. But when once she can 

 be trusted she will do better than almost any eyess. To begin 

 with, she can kill from a much lower pitch than the latter. She 

 is swifter on the wing ; she is a better footer ; and she knows 

 much better how to play her cards. And one of the best cards 

 of a game-hawk is a high pitch. Why should she not play it ? 

 Has she not already done so to perfection long before you had 

 the honour of her acquaintance? How often, in far northern 

 lands, has she from above the highest mountains come down 

 like a thunderbolt upon the fast-flying ptarmigan or shifty rock- 

 pigeon ? Does she not know that it is this altitude which gives 

 power and success? When she has begun killing grouse she 

 will soon enter into the spirit of the thing. Every bird — and a 

 hawk not least — knows that what has happened once or twice 

 may happen again. She was thrown off; she saw no lure, no 

 rook. (For we took care, did we not, that none was in sight?) 

 After a while you put up a grouse for her. And now, on 

 another occasion, to the same beginning will there not be 

 the same end? She will almost certainly think it well to be 

 prepared for such a contingency ; and the only way to be 

 prepared is to get up a bit, and to remain pretty near the 

 falconer. As soon as her pains have been rewarded she is 



