270 FALCONRY 



203 



But considering how bad a partridge year this was, and that 

 no hawking was done after November i, it can hardly be 

 called a fair average year. About six hawks were flown during 

 the season. In 1886 ninety- six grouse and one woodcock were 

 killed at Langwell, Caithness, in August and September, and 

 in 1887 ninety-three grouse on the same moors, two blackcock, 

 and two pheasants. 



Where grouse are so wild that they cannot possibly be in- 

 duced to lie to the dog, flights may be obtained by putting up 

 the hawk to wait on .as soon as likely ground is reached, and 

 forming a good wide line of beaters across the moor. If the 

 hawk is steady and goes high, a good many grouse may be 

 killed in. this way ; but it is, of course, an inferior sport to the 

 legitimate practice of working the highly trained dog in con^ 

 junction with the highly trained hawk, which has been de- 

 scribed in the preceding pages. 



The method of putting the hawk up beforehand has been 

 regularly followed by Major Hawkins Fisher, a falconer of 

 thirty years' experience, who has met with success of no mean 

 order. In 1887 Major Fisher made the excellent bag of in 

 grouse, nine partridges, one snipe, and a woodcock owl, and in 

 1886 he also met with excellent sport, of which we have not 

 a record. . Major Fisher also gives an account of an extraor- 

 dinary flight which one of his eyess falcons made at a woodcock 

 on the shores of Loch Eil, when both cock and hawk mounted 

 into the air over the loch to such a height that even powerful 

 glasses failed to discern them. At lasta speck was seen coming 



