LOST HAWKS 219 



will, of course, come and fraternise much more readily, especially 

 if the stable-companion flown as a decoy happens to have been 

 a comrade at hack or in some double flights. They will, how- 

 ever, do so quickly enough without any special inducement at 

 all. A friend of mine brought a hawk, newly trained, from a 

 distance to Salisbury Plain. She was lost in a very long flight 

 before she had passed a single night in the house to which she 

 was being taken, and was not even seen by her owner for two 

 or three whole days. One morning I was exercising a hawk 

 which the lost one had never seen, and suddenly there were 

 two hawks stooping to the lure instead of one. I had never 

 seen the wanderer, but understood at once what had occurred, 

 and tried to so arrange that the lure should be struck by the 

 new-comer. Either by accident or design she failed two or three 

 times in succession to do this, and I was obliged to take down 

 my own hawk and carry her in, and bring out a live lure for 

 the other, upon which she was quickly taken up. Both Tag- 

 rag, which had been out a week, and a merlin, which had been 

 out for nine days, were brought up from the unknown hack 

 ground to join in a ringing flight by another hawk, and recap- 

 tured in the same way. 



A trained hawk will sometimes be taken off by wild ones, 

 with which she will go soaring and otherwise amusing herself 

 for a while. But the good-fellowship between them does not 

 usually last long. In the open places where long-winged hawks 

 are flown there are often a good many wild hawks about — 

 peregrines, merlins, and occasionally even hobbies, besides the 

 ubiquitous kestrel, with which the higher quality hawks dis- 

 dain to associate. But each wild hawk, or at least each 

 pair or family of wild hawks, seems to have its own ap- 

 pointed beat, and resents the intrusion into it of a stranger. 

 Everyone knows that birds will frequently attack any inter- 

 loper which comes with any intention of staying and quartering 

 itself in the country already appropriated by its own denizens. 

 Now the wild hawks, though they will often ■ attack a trained 

 one as soon as they have set eyes upon her, yet will also often 

 go playing with her as long as their idea is that she is merely a 

 visitor, and will not permanently poach on their preserves. It 

 is when they find that the new-comer is really intending to 

 take up her abode in the neighbourhood, and appropriate her 

 share of the booty, which they looked upon as reserved for 

 themselves, that they begin to really make it so hot for her that 

 she is fain to get on into a less-favoured district which has not 



