MOULTING 245 



to dispense with a part of their flying apparatus and of their 

 energy. 



Wild hawks vary a good deal in the date at which they 

 drop their first feather, but trained hawks can be made to vary 

 still more. Experience soon showed that a certain diet and 

 regimen would hurry on the moult and expedite its progress, 

 whereas another would defer and protract it. The young 

 falconer will reflect betimes which of these treatments will best 

 suit his plans, and act accordingly, remembering that, having 

 once decided, he cannot without great inconvenience and even 

 some risk adopt a different system. In any event he will, 

 except in the case of rook-hawks, find himself in some diffi- 

 culty, for the moulting process is in any case a long one. It 

 is reckoned by months rather than by weeks. In peregrines, 

 which are notoriously slow and bad moulters, it may last a 

 half-year. If ever it is completed in three months the falconer 

 may think himself lucky ; and the worst of it is, that the moult- 

 ing months generally include August and September. The 

 earliest day on which a feather can be dropped is usually well 

 on in March or often early in April, and this is in the case of 

 eyesses, for the passage hawks can hardly be induced to begin 

 till a good deal later. Unless, therefore, the falconer can "hurry 

 the feathers down, he will hardly get his hawk even through 

 the moult, and far less ready for active work, by September i . 

 We shall see, moreover, that the faster the moulting process is 

 pushed on the less fit will the hawk be at the end of it to 

 immediately take the field. 



It is thus, in at least nine cases out of ten, practically 

 impossible to fly a hawk in full plumage at rooks in the spring, 

 and afterwards to fly the same hawk also in full plumage at 

 game in August or September. And whether she has been 

 flown in the early part of the year or not, it is still 

 almost equally difficult to so arrange that she shall fly in 

 full feather in the early part of the game season. Hence it is 

 that an eyess of the year, when flown as soon as she is fully 

 trained, comes usually into the field better equipped in the way 

 of feathers than what may be called her elders and betters. 

 Occasionally the moult of a passage hawk, or even adult eyess, 

 can be deferred until August or even September, but this result 

 is not to be reckoned upon with any certainty. The youthful 

 grouse or partridges and their rather hard-worked parents, the 

 adolescent or moulting lark, and inexperienced blackbird, ought 

 all to be a little grateful to Dame Nature for having ordained 



