270 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



that her temper is ruffled, and the relations between her and 

 her trainer become strained. 



One of the most annoying errors into which a hawk can 

 fall, is a belief in her own vocal powers. No hawk ever has at 

 all a musical voice, and the exercise of it, even in moderation, 

 can quite well be dispensed with. Unfortunately, most eyesses 

 which have been taken very young from the nest develop quite 

 early in life a tendency to cry out. When there are several of 

 them together they often catch the habit from one another, and 

 becoming worse as their feathers come down, are by the time 

 they are ready to fly confirmed " screamers." No cure has, I 

 believe, been discovered for this vice, except that of turning 

 them out to hack, which in nine cases out of ten proves success- 

 ful. I have several times known a family of hawks when first 

 turned out, to keep up for the first day or two an almost 

 incessant screeching, and yet I have taken up the same birds 

 at the end of hack completely cured. Generally, as soon as 

 a young hawk finds that she can expend all her superfluous 

 energy in flying about, and that no sort of attention is ever paid 

 to her eloquence, she gets tired of indulging in the weakness. 

 I know, however, of a case where hobbies too early taken were 

 actually lost at hack, and never came at all either to lure or 

 hack board, and yet continued to scream when quite wild for 

 at least more than a week afterwards. 



Passage hawks, I believe, never scream. It is often supposed 

 that no wild hawks scream, and this, I think, is as a rule true. 

 But I have heard young wild kestrels scream for a few days 

 after they could fly, and one lot of wild merlins, though they 

 were fully summed, and had probably been already driven 

 away by the parents to shift for themselves, were what may 

 be called bad screamers. They would scream while soar- 

 ing, ten minutes at a time, and at such a height that the 

 sound could only just be heard. It is true that there were 

 trained merlins about at the time, and possibly they may have 

 been calling to them. It is quite a common thing for hawks 

 which are entirely free from the vice to call out when they see 

 another hawk unexpectedly. They will do it even when they 

 see their own likenesses in a looking-glass. 



If the hawk, after being well hacked, still retains vestiges of 

 the bad habit, there is yet another chance. The flying and 

 killing wild quarry has often a magical effect in curing this vice, 

 which would seem, like some other malpractices, to be largely 

 the result of idleness. Still there are instances where, in spite of 



