HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 67 
CHAPTER III. 
STORM CLOUD—THE PRINCESS—ISLAY—NEARLY BLINDED— 
AN APPEAL TO THE GENEROSITY OF SPORTSMEN. 
STRANGE as it may seem, the real difficulty with which the inex- 
perienced falconer has to contend is, not the taming a hawk, but 
the managing the training in sucha way that the bird shall fly 
quarry eagerly and in the most effective manner. A hawk ‘‘ made” 
at once to the lure, from a nestling, and never shown quarry for 
some months, would probably never even look at a pigeon on 
the wing. Such a bird was once sent to me, and it flew, even 
when hungry, through a flock of pigeons, not taking the smallest 
notice of them. This was a peregrine tiercel. On the other 
hand, you may so fly a hawk at quarry, especially I think at 
game, killing day after day, and feeding the hawk up from 
the head and neck of the grouse or partridge—something sub- 
stantial being of course added—that the dead lure will cease 
to have any attractions. Indeed, I confess that I have been 
obliged to take down some of my most successful falcons, 
when I did not happen to find them on the game, with a live 
pigeon in a string. At the same time, I have had birds—such 
as the Princess and Storm Cloud (not Black Cloud, but a faleon)— 
which would come to a dead lure in the middle of their best work ; 
and yet these were brilliant birds. They curiously combined success 
5 with docility; and I remind my readers that they were brilliant, 
because had they not been so, their coming to the dead lure would 
have been nothing. Never, I would say toa young falconer, buy a 
hawk only because it comes well to the lure; see it fly quarry, and 
fast quarry also; but this advice I gave by implication just now, 
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