TRAINING AND ENTERING 97 



all these hawks. In the wild state they spend hours almost 

 daily at it. But if they are to wait on in the rather artificial 

 style required by the falconer, nature must be aided a little. 

 When they are keen at coming to the lure, you should call them 

 off, and, as they approach, jerk the lure away off the ground 

 in front of them. When they have missed it, their impetus will 

 carry them on beyond the place where it was, and they will rise in 

 the air, partly turning round to see what has become of it. Then 

 after a very short delay you may throw the lure down again, and 

 let them have it. At the second lesson it may be hid for a longer 

 time, and the hawk allowed to make one or two circles in the air 

 before it is produced. At each fresh lesson make the interval of 

 waiting longer, hiding the lure as long as the hawk is circling 

 round within a short distance of you, but producing it when she 

 strays away, or gives signs of being tired out. By this means 

 she will soon learn that patience is not only a virtue, but a 

 profitable, and even a pleasant one. For if the wild hawk 

 soars from choice for the mere pleasure of stretching her wings, 

 it must be natural for a trained hawk, which has so much fewer 

 opportunities of doing this, to take a delight in it. Eyess pere- 

 grines are very unlike one another in their aptness for waiting 

 on. Some are very slow to learn it, and can hardly, by the 

 greatest efforts, be got to go up any height, or even to keep on 

 the wing at all. Some few, on the other hand, take to it quite 

 readily, and, after a few days, of their own accord mount to a 

 great height. Of course the higher a hawk can be induced to 

 go, the better game-hawk she will turn out. 



As for passage hawks, you must remember, when teaching 

 them to wait on, that there is much more danger than there is 

 with eyesses. The longer they are kept on the wing, and the 

 higher they go, the more chance there is of their espying some 

 bird passing — perhaps some old familiar quarry, of which 

 they have struck down scores for themselves — and making off 

 after it. The very fact of being in the air, and feeling the free 

 breeze as it lifts their wings, must remind them forcibly of old 

 days of liberty, and slacken the ties which bind them to their 

 new master. Be extra careful, therefore, in the case of all pass- 

 age hawks, and most of all with the haggard, to watch for any 

 signs of returning native wildness. Fly her in a country where 

 chance quarry are not likely to appear. If she " rakes away," or 

 wanders far from you in making her airy circles, call her back 

 before it is too late. Fly her always when she is quite sharp- 

 set, even if you have to give her little or no exercise on some 

 of the intermediate days between one lesson and the next. 



