36 PRACTICAL FALCONRY. 
passage-hawks for this flight. Let me give my own experience 
first. I have found that there is a great deal of difference amongst 
falcons in their care to fly rooks. Some birds, but they are won- 
derfully in the minority, will go at them day after day, now losing 
them in trees, and now killing them—disappointed time after 
time, but sticking to them through everything. I speak of eyesses 
of my own experience. Others will fly eagerly at first, but, though 
they are tolerably successful, will give them up in time. And there 
are falcons that will hardly look at them at all, and can scarcely 
be brought to them even with bagged quarry. 
However, most falcons, and some few tiercels, will fly rooks pretty 
well to begin with. Of course I speak of strong dashing birds, not 
tame things that have only been coddled; and, if they have been 
knocked about at grouse and wood pigeons, having been successful 
with these, they are none the worse for that—I think better. 
Of course there is no “ waiting on”’ in this sport, as there is none 
in heron-hawking, the hawk being flown from the fist; but it might 
perhaps be well, in some very few cases, to put the hawk up before 
the flock rises: that must be left to the falconer’s judgment. 
The ordinary thing is to fly during passage, for rooks have a passage 
like herons. 
If there are trees near, there should certainly be beaters, or 4 
“field,” if you like to call it so. But trees are a great nuisance; 
ané, without going into what would be strictly called a wooded 
district, they may be so frequent as to make rook-hawking impos- 
sible. Rooks always make for trees. Many a time have I nearly 
run my life out, when I have not been well supported by others, or 
there have been no others, to get a rook out of a tree while the 
falcon remained. Stones won’t always do it—not often: shouting 
is of little more use. A pistol is the best thing, and there are 
cases when even that requires a little shot over the powder. 
A rook, however, as we all know, is very frightened at anything 
