294 FALCONRY 



but hawks are still trained annually that are as capable of this 

 noble flight as any that ever have been reclaimed by man, 

 and it needs only a little enterprise to reinstate this, the most 

 magnificent form of falconry, if it could meet with the same 

 cordial support, and be organised under those Royal auspices 

 that were extended to it forty years ago. 



Perhaps even superior to heron hawking was the flight at 

 the kite, for which passage falcons combined with gerfalcons 

 were used. It is many years since kites were common enough 

 in England to be an object of sport, and the method of flying 

 them is more particularly described in a subsequent chapter on 

 the gyrfalcon. 



The modern substitute for heron hawking is the flight at the 

 rook, and it is by no means a bad one. Rook hawking is the 

 finest form of the sport that is nowadays readily available, 

 provided that it is carried out in a proper manner, in a good 

 country, and with the best of hawks. Rooks, just like herons, 

 may be caught in a bad country by very inferior hawks. In 

 the autumn, in a country where the fields are large, the fences 

 small, and the hedgerow timber scarce, rooks may be driven 

 into covert and (possibly) caught, after a chase partaking of the 

 nature of a rat hunt, by almost any hawk that has courage 

 enough to go straight and hard at her quarry. But this is not 

 rook hawking. The falcons that have beaten down rook after 

 rook into fences or covert in enclosed country in November 

 would find themselves at a sad nonplus if they were hooded 

 off at an old cock rook travelling away over the wide downs of 

 Wilts or Berks in the teeth of a March north-easter. The 

 proper time for this sport is the month of March or early 

 April when the hen birds are in the rookery and the cocks 

 are travelling great distances in search of food. A very open 

 country is requisite. The chalk downs of the south of England 

 are, generally speaking, the best. Parts of Salisbury Plain, the 

 downs near Lambourne and Ashdown, and near Brighton, at 

 Royston, and other parts of Cambridgeshire are capital country, 

 and in fact, wherever a clear open space of a mile can be found 



