CHAPTER V 



Passage Hawks 



ALL big hawks captured after they have begun to prey 

 for themselves are now commonly called passage hawks, 

 although the name, strictly speaking, may not be at all correct. 

 Wild-caught is a more inclusive term ; and it is often used in 

 the case of sparrow-hawks, merlins, and hobbies, when casually 

 caught by bird-catchers or gamekeepers, and not killed in the 

 process. We have seen that passage hawk means properly a 

 hawk caught during the period of her first migration south- 

 wards. It is, however, of course, possible to capture her either 

 in early autumn before the migration has commenced — in which 

 case a peregrine is more properly called a slight falcon or 

 slight tiercel — or late in the winter, when she has become a 

 lantiner, or in the spring migration, when she is travelling 

 north. But if she has begun to moult before she comes into 

 man's possession, she is correctly described as a haggard. If 

 gamekeepers were a little more alive to their own interests they 

 would often catch sparrow-hawks, and sometimes merlins and 

 peregrines, alive, and dispose of them at a very remunerative 

 price, instead of killing them, often in a most barbarous way, by 

 means of pole-traps and other snares, which destroy or cripple 

 them after hours of torture, and render them almost valueless. 

 But for generations past no systematic attempts have been 

 made in this country to snare wild hawks in an uninjured 

 condition ; and if a falconer should be able to obtain any hawk 

 so taken he may consider himself exceptionally lucky. Several 

 such hawks have indeed been caught in England, and, getting 

 rather accidentally into good hands, have turned out very 

 excellent performers. Occasionally a sparrow-hawk or merlin is 

 saved alive out of the nets of a bird-catcher ; and these, if heard 

 of before their plumage is ruined, are prizes for which many 

 a falconer will gladly give something like their weight in silver. 



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