FALCONRY 285 



is on the wing again, trained and under control, 

 and shortly to be allowed to kill his first grouse 

 five hundred miles from where he learned the 

 use of his wings, " flying at hack" and roosting 

 on Lyndhurst spire. 



During my life at Lyndhurst, a great many 

 first-class hawks hawks such as perhaps have 

 had no superiors passed through the mews at 

 the King's House. Of the young hawks that 

 used the spire so persistently in their youth 

 were many very superior game hawks, coming 

 most of them year by year from certain eyries 

 in the precipitous cliffs of north-west Donegal. 

 Whether it was the intensely wild and stormy 

 surroundings of their birthplace, or whether it 

 was a peculiar strain of dark-coloured peregrines 

 that haunted those precipitous cliffs, I cannot 

 tell ; but year by year hawks of the highest 

 class were sent us from those eyries to mature 

 round Lyndhurst spire. Perhaps one of the best 

 was that famous tiercel Persimmon, who came to 

 us in 1897, and lasted till 1900, killing, year 

 after year, old cock grouse up to the end of the 

 season a thing that not one tiercel in ten is 

 able to do. In one year he killed seventy head 

 of game. But again, from the Culvercliff in the 

 Isle of Wight an ancient eyrie in which hawks 

 have bred for centuries one that was specially 



