456 SHORT- WINGED HA WKS 



render most hawks obedient and come at once to 

 call. 



There are only two short- winged hawks — viz., the 

 sparrow-hawk and the goshawk — and these hawks are 

 7iever hacked, because they get their power of flight at 

 once. All the other hawks are long-winged, and 

 require hacking if they have been taken from the 

 nest. 



The smaller falcons, such as the merlin and hobby, 

 must not be hacked with their big cousins the pere- 

 grines, but elsewhere, lest the latter should kill them. 



Hawks should have a bath daily, so that if no stream 

 exists, a bath must be put down flat into the ground 

 and kept fresh. 



When taken up from hack, say in about three weeks, 

 they should be tied to a block on a grass-plot, and 

 removed at night to a darkened room or mews, and 

 fastened to canvased perches, the canvas, which 

 should reach nearly to the ground, preventing their 

 feathers from being broken. 



Hawks are kept unhooded in the mews, which must 

 be kept perfectly dark, and so tied to the perch as not 

 to be able to reach each other, which might otherwise 

 be fatal. I may, indeed, as well here remark that when 

 ' weathering ' out of doors they must also be unhooded. 

 The floor of the mews must be covered with sand or 

 sawdust, and the walls should be whitewashed, and 

 everything kept scrupulously clean. 



Like a sagacious dog or horse, falcons soon learn 

 to recognise the voice and step of their master. 



The colour of the young birds is brown, the feathers 

 of the back and wings being edged with a lighter tint, 

 the colour of the breast and thighs being rufous, and 



