78 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
To show what wind a hawk may be got into by constant flying, I 
may mention that I saw a falcon of mine, after flying some kestrels 
eagerly for several minutes, after leaving them for a grouse, which 
she lost in a wood, after flying a rook over a long space of open 
ground and losing it in cover, came back, and from a pitch over my 
head, fly and kill a grouse which I sprung from under my feet. This 
was Maid o’ the Mist. And Islay once killed an old cock grouse after 
atwo-mile flight. In this latter instance, however, my only wonder is, 
that anything could possibly live before Islay for that space: and I 
can only explain the fact by supposing that the old gyouse fell under 
her foot without a blow (not an uncommon thing with experienced 
grouse) once or twice in the flight, and so put the hawk out; getting 
up again with his quick little wings when she was quite low, he 
would dash off at full speed, leaving her to get into her swing again, 
and too near the ground to do so easily. It took us an hour anda 
half, I think, to find the hawk on this occasion, and she was even 
then on what was left of the grouse, with a very full crop indeed. 
I have twice had peregrines sent home in a basket by well-meaning 
people who managed to catch them on their quarry, and, imagining 
that the hawks were lost, though they were doing me a service. 
After a time, however, the neighbourhood understands one’s ways— 
indeed, some of the people become respectable falconers; and then 
these little accidents don’t happen. It is, I need hardly say, a 
difficult thing to look pleasant when one sees the bent feathers of 
the wing and tail. Still, if no feather is really broken, “a little 
(hot) water clears us of this deed.” ; 
One morning, looking out of my bedroom window to find my five 
merlins, which were at hack, I counted, to my surprise, six on the 
garden wall. The stranger was a nestling bred on some of the 
moors near, I suppose, though I can never hear of a nest; and, Iam 
ashamed to say, we so bungled matters that we did not catch her. 
I put out a merlin on a block in the field, and thus frightened her, 
