84 HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 
or at any rate from some tree near you, at once after the * 
quarry. 
The first goshawk I had here was not mine; it was most kindly 
lent me for a good many months—indeed I think for more than & 
year—by a gentleman who lives near Ware. This was a fine female 
bird, injured in her plumage, and with a little blot in the yellow of 
one of her eyes, which, however, did not in the least touch the sight, 
nor do I think it reached the pupil atall. I killed many rabbits with 
her, both wild and bagged, and one hare about three-fourths grown. 
The account of that flight I gave fully in “Falconry: its Claims, 
History, and Practice,” and will not repeat it. 
My goshawks, though of course showing sometimes the natural 
gulkiness of disposition almost peculiar to the species, or shared 
with it by the sparrowhawk, were uncommonly tame and amiable 
birds when in a good humour. The one of which I speak used to 
play with my watch chain, tossing the seal from her with her beak, 
and catching it, taking me by the button in a very familiar manner. 
Another bird, a female, would come to hand eagerly from a tree or 
wall, fifty yards off, when in real flying order; and once, on a cold 
frosty night, tucked her head under my beard as I was carrying her 
home from a, distance. 
But notwithstanding that goshawks properly trained will come 
to hand, I like to accustom them to fly on occasion to the lure, and 
for this reason ; the best bird amongst them may (good judge as you 
may be of her present humour) sometimes a little deceive you, and 
not be quite in the fiying order you expected when you took her 
from the perch. In this condition she may possibly, in the neigh- 
bourhood of trees, plague you a good deal about coming directly to 
hand; and it is then, having no rabbit or pigeon with you perhaps 
that you will find the ordinary falcon’s lure very useful. Still, you 
ean almost always tell when a goshawk is in what they call “ yarak,”’ 
i.e., Simply in a good temper, decidedly hungry, and eager for 
