FALCONRY 293 



sure ; and if you can get her to exercise those 

 powers for your behoof whenever you please, 

 you have got a hawk worth any amount of 

 trouble. It is all a question of temper. If you 

 light on a really sweet-tempered haggard, and 

 have the patience and experience to handle her, 

 you may get a hawk worth many ordinary 

 ones. 



Such a hawk was Shelagh. She became as 

 sweet-tempered and gentle as a bird could be, and 

 we all loved her. As to performances : in her first 

 year she killed fifty-four rooks ; in her second, 

 sixty-two. She came out in her third year as 

 good as ever, and was beginning to run up a score 

 again, when she was lost, owing to a clumsy 

 blunder with rotten tackle. It is, alas ! so 

 easy to lose a good hawk ; and the better she 

 is the harder it is to recover her, for a good 

 hawk is never hungry. We have had other 

 good haggards, some that were for long so 

 handy as to be useful as game hawks, but 

 Shelagh was the nearest approach to a perfectly 

 tractable wild falcon that I remember having 

 handled. 



We have had many a notable hawk such 

 as Josephine, who killed 185 rooks in three and 

 and a half seasons ; Aim well, who killed 72 rooks 

 her first season ; but it would be tedious to recount 



