IV. i 

 PROTECTION OF ANIMALS FOR SPORT 



HAWKING AND HAWKS 



THE sport of hawking and the possession of hawks were 

 recognized from early times in Britain as badges of nobility. 

 So significant was the presence of trained hawks that 

 members of the Court and the nobles seldom rode without 

 them, and seldom dispensed with them on their travels or 

 even on the field of battle, where the surrender of a hawk 

 was accounted the surrender of honour. It is little wonder, 

 then, that from early times care was given to the preserva- 

 tion and rearing of hawks. Tradition goes to show that even 

 during the period of the raids of the Norsemen, about the 

 tenth century, hawking was practised by the noblemen of 

 Scotland ; but the earliest historical reference to protection 

 occurs in the reign of William the Lion (1165-1214), 

 when Robert of Avenel, in granting his lands in Eskdale to 

 the Abbey of Melrose, reserved the right to the eyries of 

 Falcons, and to tercels or male hawks. Even the tree whereon 

 a hawk had built in one year was safe from the axe of the 

 woodsman, until succeeding years made clear that it had 

 been deserted as a nesting site, a wise provision depending 

 upon an intimate knowledge of the limited choice of sites 

 available for a hawk's nest and nest flight. Similar reserva- 

 tions hedged about the eyries on estates in Ayrshire granted 

 about the same time to the same Abbey by the Stewarts. 



In the thirteenth century hawking was a recognized 

 privilege of the Court, and Alexander 1 1 1 kept Falcons at 

 Forres and at Dunipace in Stirlingshire, and in 1263, so the 

 accounts of the year show, paid for eight and a half chalders 

 of corn consumed by William de Hamyl during his twenty- 

 nine weeks' stay at Forfar with the Kings' Falcons. King 

 Robert the Bruce had his falcon-house at Cardross in Dum- 

 bartonshire repaired shortly before his death, and in 1 343 his 

 successor, David 1 1, granted to John of the Isles many islands 

 and lands " cum aeriis falcomim" About this time the 



