182 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



should not be kept for long upon coarse food, but indulged 

 now and then at least with viands of the best quality. Mice 

 are capital food, not only for kestrels and hobbies, but for 

 merlins and sparrow-hawks, and may be given whole to any 

 kind of hawk by way of castings. Eagles are not particular as 

 to diet ; but they should have plenty of tirings, and their meat 

 will be none the worse for being a bit tough. 



Eagles and all short-winged hawks should have a gorge, 

 that is to say, as much as they choose to eat, about three times 

 in a fortnight, and on the following day should be very sparingly 

 fed. Eagles, indeed, and some female goshawks need not be 

 fed at all, if they are to be flown at wild quarry on the second 

 day after their full meal. But none of the smaller hawks will 

 stand anything approaching to starvation ; and to leave a male 

 sparrow-hawk or merlin without food for twenty-four hours 

 would probably do him a permanent injury, or at all events 

 ruin his chance of doing himself any justice in the field for a 

 long time to come. In the case of these, and indeed all the 

 long-winged hawks, when in constant exercise at wild quarry, 

 I am not quite sure that any good is done by giving any gorges 

 at all. I never do so with merlins in the lark season ; and yet 

 I have killed with one of them over thirty larks in succes- 

 sion without a miss. Granting that in their wild state all 

 hawks occasionally gorge themselves, it must be remembered 

 that trained hawks are not in a wild state. The analogy is not 

 a just or true one, any more than it would be to argue from 

 the habits of Red Indians to those expedient for a white man 

 in training. However, there can be no great harm, even if there 

 is no great advantage, in giving a gorge to a peregrine once a 

 week. It is a practice consecrated by old tradition and pre- 

 cept : and it is not for us degenerate modern amateurs to lightly 

 discard the maxims of the age of chivalry. 



In saying that peregrines and other big hawks are fed once 

 a day, it is not meant that they should never taste a morsel of 

 food except their one solid meal. Small tit-bits will be forth- 

 coming at odd times, as for instance in the early morning, when 

 they are moved from the perch to the block, or taken to bathe, 

 or to be carried. They will pick a little from the tirings at 

 which they are almost every day set to work. There is no 

 need to be stingy with these odds-and-ends ; indeed, the old 

 falconers would very often give their falcons quite a small 

 meal when they hooded up for the field, or a little before. One 

 ancient writer declares that a falcon will eat the wing of a fowl. 



