ROOK HAWKING 295 



rooks may be flown with success. The difficulty is to find any 

 country where flights can be obtained day after day ; for this 

 quarry becomes very crafty, and the appearance of the well- 

 known hawking party over the sky-line is enough to send every 

 rook in the plain below scurrying to his home if the visits have 

 been too frequent to the same portion of country. 



A flight may be obtained wherever the quarry is found far 

 enough from covert, whether following the plough, feeding on 

 new-sown corn, or on open downs. After rain with a south-west 

 wind they will be found on the turf downs, but in dry, cold 

 weather they will haunt sheepfolds or villages, and flights are 

 not so easily obtained. The best flights are obtained at rooks 

 * upon the passage ' that is to say, passing regularly from the 

 rookery to some favourite feeding ground across an open 

 stretch of ground. Such a slip is generally a pretty long 

 one ; the rook at any rate is well on the wing, and a fine flight 

 is almost a certainty. It is most essential that the hawks should 

 be slipped dead up wind at the rook. This is a cardinal rule, 

 and must never be transgressed, although with a very good 

 hawk liberties may be taken now and then. If the slip is down 

 wind, or so nearly on a side wind that by a swerve right or left 

 the rook can get to leeward of the hawk, he will dash away 

 down wind at a pace that will leave all riders far behind. 

 Although the hawk will follow him just as fast, it will be a stern 

 chase and a long one, and in no country that we are aware of 

 is there room for a flight of this kind to end successfully ; the 

 result must be a long uninteresting chase without a stoop, with 

 the rook safely ensconced in covert at the end, some miles from 

 the falconer. The hawk is there with no one to take her down 

 to the lure, and is left to dash after any fresh quarry as soon as 

 she gets her wind, and thus is lost. 



If the slip be dead in wind, the rook cannot go straight 

 away from the falcon, who is better at flying into the wind than 

 he is ; but he will at first do his best to escape her by flying up 

 wind, rising all the time to keep above her ; thus ere she can 

 reach him both birds will have attained a considerable height. 



