PEREGRINE FALCON. 57 



lie is pursued, and endeavours to keep above the hawks by 

 rising in the air; the hawks fly in a spiral direction to get 

 above the heron, and thus the three birds frequently appear 

 to be flying in different directions. The first hawk makes 

 his stoop as soon as he gets above the heron, who evades it 

 by a shift, and thus gives the second hawk time to get up 

 and to stoop in his turn. In what is deemed a good flight, 

 this is frequently repeated, and the three birds often mount 

 to a great height in the air. When one of the hawks seizes his 

 prey, the other soon binds to him, as it is termed, and buoyant 

 from the motion of their wings, the three descend together 

 to the ground with but little velocity. The falconer must 

 lose no time in getting hold of the heron's neck when he is 

 on the ground to prevent him from injuring the hawks. It 

 is then, and not when he is in the air, that he will use his 

 beak in his defence. Hawks have, indeed, sometimes, but 

 very rarely, been hurt by striking against the heron's beak 

 when stooping ; but this has been purely by accident, and 

 not (as has been said) by the heron's presenting his beak to 

 his pursuer as a means of defence. When the heron flies 

 down wind, he is seldom taken, the hawks are in great 

 danger of being lost, and as the flight is in a straight line, 

 it affords but little sport."* 



Thompson, in his ' Birds of Ireland,' mentions that a 

 Peregrine Falcon "having caught a landrail which it was 

 about to eat on a house-top, instantly gave chase to another 

 rail that was sprung, and, still retaining its first victim, 

 secured the second with its other foot : it bore off both 

 together." 



* In illustration of the habit of the quarry to "take down wind," Mr. W. 

 Aldis Wright, one of the editors of the ' Cambridge Shakespear,' has kindly 

 supplied an explanation given him by a friend, no less ingenious than simple, of 

 the often-quoted passage in ' Hamlet ' : " I am but mad north- north-west : when 

 the wind is southerly I know a Hawk from a Heronshaw." Hawking in the 

 morning, under the old system the best time for sport, if the wind be from the 

 north-west the birds fly so that any person watching them has the sun in his eyes, 

 and is therefore not able easily to tell the Hawk from the Heron. When the wind 

 is southerly the birds fly away from the sun, and any one can know which is 

 which. Hamlet's application of the old saw was to show that his madness was 

 much akin to other men's sanity. 



VOL. I. I 



