152 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



CHAPTER IX. 



" Therefore I think my eagle is so justly styled Jove's servant in 

 ordinary : and that very falcon that I am now going to see deserves no 

 meaner a title. "Iz A AK WALTON. 



Falconry Youthful Attempts in the ' Noble Art" Heron 

 Hawking The Look-out The Chace An Irish Bog 

 Fabulous Errors Magpie Hawking Colonel Bonham's 

 Hawking Experiences Scardroy Peregrine Falcons 

 Grouse Hawking Russian Setters The Goshawk com- 

 pared with the Peregrine Their respective Merits How 

 does the Falcon strike her Quarry ? Woodcock Hawk- 

 ing Convincing Fact Anecdote The Falcon's last 

 Flight ' Falcon' and < Tiercel' Wild Duck, Black- 

 cock, and Ptarmigan Hawking i Playing' the Hawks 

 The Falcon at Sea Recognition and Recovery. 



MY experience with trained falcons has been 

 comparatively slight, although when quite a lad I 

 succeeded in reclaiming the peregrine and the 

 merlin. The field of my operations was in a 

 remote part of the West of Ireland, where a 

 great extent of preserved mountain and moor- 

 land afforded abundance of quarry, and plenty of 

 elbow-room for the experiment; but the result 

 never equalled my hopes. Just, perhaps, as one 



