54 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
but the flight with flamingoes must have been a glorious one indeed. 
I remember the account of it lighted the tinder hidden somewhere 
in my heart, and it has certainly blazed away since with more than 
a sufficient flame. 
My first essay was with a kestrel, which I believed (in common 
with a good many others, I fancy) to be a sparrowhawk. I hooded 
him, poor fellow, with a black velvet hood, manufactured, to my 
order, by my mother’s maid. This hood was little more than a bag 
tightened by a piece of tape, and it made the bird’s eyes water, for 
it hung upon them. I did not know at that time that hoods must 
be stiff, and made upon a block. The kestrel disappointed me very 
much, for he was frightened out of his wits at a live starling, and 
would not always kill a sparrow. He got tame, it is true; but, 
though I sat up with him surreptitiously, night after night, till I 
was dreadfully fagged, in order to keep him awake—as I had heard 
from my friends, and from some book I at this time got sight of, I 
ought to do—he flew away in the most natural manner the first time 
I gave him his liberty. I tried several kestrels, but one was as bad 
as the other, and it was not till some time later that I knew how 
even the most skilful care, had it been mine to give, would have been 
thrown away upon birds which, though easily tamed, do not chase. 
Then I got a sparrowhawk, which went through the usual process 
of getting his legs entangled in the imbecility of a temporary 
paralysis, falling off the fist the moment he was placed upon it, and: 
hanging by his leash like a dead bird. Still I stuck to him well, 
and hardly ever lost my temper. I made allowances for his ill- 
humour, and tried to look to the future when I should reap my 
reward; but thatfuture never came. Some accident happened to 
the bird, and he was never put on the wing at all. 
Some years passed, and I got a whole nest of sparrowhawks. I 
put them in an apple tree, in an open hamper with straw, the lid 
forming a platform. I fed them periodically on beefsteak, sounding 
