LARK HAWKING 321 



stones, a good terrier, that will nose them out, is of considerable 

 service. In more recent times the Rev. G. E. Freeman, 

 author of ' Falconry : its History, Claims, and Practice,' has 

 been successful with merlins at various different flights ; his 

 doings are well recorded in Chapter XIII. of that work, and he 

 appears to have had considerable sport in flying the ring ousel 

 as well as the skylark. ^y 



I More recently Mr. E. B. Michell, an amateur falconer of 

 some experience, met with great success with merlins. In i88t 



• he succeeded in taking, up to September 15, fifty larks with 

 two male merlins; but in 1883, with three merlins, two of them 

 females, he killed (on very first-rate ground on Salisbury Plain) 

 no less than 136 larks. Whether this surpasses Mr. New- 

 come's scores of former years or not we do not know, but it is 

 certainly very good work, and deserves to be placed on record. 

 For ourselves, flying in bad country, we have found from thirty 

 to forty larks killed between August 20th to September 20th to 

 be fairly successful work, and our practice for some years was to 

 allow our merlins to fly loose after the autumn migration began, 

 and to procure fresh ones the following year, by which we 

 avoided the probability of losing our little pets during the 

 winter, and yet had fresh ones ready for the only time of year 

 when much can be done with these hawks. 



Any varieties of small birds can be flown with merlins, 

 where the fields are large enough and the birds to be found ; 

 they are very quick and active, even among trees and bushes, 

 partaking a good deal of the character of the true hawks, such 

 as the sparrow-hawk and goshawk, as well as of the falcons, to 

 which they properly belong. 



The more courageous females can be trained to fly pigeons 

 well, and so great is their activity that it requires a good 

 pigeon to escape them ; and if the quarry seeks refuge in a bush 

 or a hedge the merlin is almost sure to follow and seize him. 

 Their method of killing birds of this large size is peculiar, 

 being by strangulation, a method not usually adopted by any 

 other hawk ; in fact, a full-grown pigeon is as strong as a merlin, 



Y 



