KITE HAWKING 315 



one of the grandest fliers the club has ever possessed. Yet 

 when hot weather set in he fell off in st)'le, and refused to fly, 

 being very untrustworthy, and was lost, owing to an unfortunate 

 accident during his first moult. 



Upon the whole, then, gerfalcons must ' be termed unsatis- 

 factory hawks to train, and though no falconer likes to miss 

 giving a fair chance to one of these noble birds, yet if sport 

 alone be the object aimed at, it is not worth while to waste 

 time upon them while the peregrine is readily obtainable. 



In old times the gerfalcon was especially valued for the 

 purpose of flying the kite, then a common bird, and probably 

 that flight was the finest that has ever been followed in this 

 country, not even excepting the ' heron on passage.' It is still 

 a common flight in India, where the sacre, a bird of almost 

 equal power to the gerfalcon, is used for it ; but the difficulty 

 of training and entering hawks to this quarry, and the courage 

 and perseverance needed to overtake so swift and high-mounting 

 a bird, show us how skilfully our ancestors must have managed 

 their hawks in order to succeed in the undertaking. 



The method by which the kite was flown was somewhat 

 peculiar. As soon as the bird was descried soaring in mid air, 

 generally at a height so great that it could hardly be dis- 

 tinguished, a live owl was let fly by the falconers, to whose legs 

 was attached a fox's brush. This both impeded the owl's 

 flight to such an extent that it could not escape, and also pre- 

 sented to the kite the spectacle of a bird of prey, such as could 

 easily be robbed, carrying off some quarry. Immedia,tely then 

 he would descend from his lofty pitch to attack the poor owl, V 

 when the falcons, generally three in number, would be slipped I, 

 at him. * 



In the Appendix to Mr. Southwell's edition of Lubbock's 

 ' Fauna of Norfolk,' written by Professor Newton, it is stated, 

 speaking of the practice of falconry in Norfolk, that : — 



Lord Orford's chief quarry seems to have been the kite, which 

 was then very common throughout England, and apparently 

 especially abundant in this district so rich in rabbits. Years ago 



