FALCONRY 



himself from the stoops of the falcon. Many requisites are 

 necessary to afford this sport in perfection — a favourable 

 country, good hawks, and able assistants.' 



The curlew is held the most difficult bird to kill with trained 

 hawks. The late Major Hawkins Fisher gave an admirable 

 account of a flight at curlew in the address he dehvered before 

 the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club ^ twenty years ago : 

 here it is, with his description of a flight at grouse and a 

 noteworthy one at a woodcock : — 



' The nearest approach to a heron flight that I have ever 

 seen, occurred in this wise. In October 1889, my old grouse 

 hawk, " Lady Jane," was waiting on at a height so great, that 

 though she is upwards of three feet across from tip to tip of 

 expanded wings, she appeared in the sky, like a pin's head, 

 over the moor, the dogs being unable for some time to find her 

 a grouse. Presently they stood, and on the men moving 

 forward to put them up for her, I perceived her in the act of 

 stooping. I called out, to prevent their purpose, and fixed my 

 glasses on the hawk expecting to see her in pursuit of other 

 grouse, raised accidentally. Presently she was down, and 

 instantly engaged with some large bird, which I deemed, and 

 the men asserted to be, a carrion crow. As it looked large and 

 light- coloured, I said, " then it is a hoody (Royston) crow " ; 

 but in a moment, as the excited couple rose high in air — at it 

 ding dong — I knew it was no crow. No ; none of that ignoble 

 brood ever flew, or held the air, like this strange quarry, which, 

 in a few seconds more, I made out to be Numenius arquata, 

 the common or long-billed curlew. I know no instance of this 

 grand flier having been taken by a trained hawk, and it is 

 generally deemed beyond the power of any such. Of course 

 it is occasionally slain by a wild falcon ; but then, doubtless, 

 the worst wild falcon is far before the best trained one, and, if 

 inclined and meaning it, can take most fowls that wing the air 

 with more or less ease. My poor trained bird (I should add, 

 the best I have ever had of her sex) was in very indifferent 



'- Proceedings, vol. x. parti., 1889-90. 



2 H 241 



