250 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



real one as do it by halves. She will very possibly moult a 

 little quicker, perhaps a little better, if she has no worry at all, 

 and can concentrate her whole energies upon the mere growing 

 of feathers, just as she did when in the nest, instead of having 

 to bother herself about jumping to the fist — a mere perfunctory 

 act of meaningless duty, devoid of practical use or result. 



The falconer will, at least once a day, visit the moulting- 

 room, if it is only for the purpose of changing the bath water, 

 clearing away the castings and the stray feathers of birds that 

 have been plucked and eaten, and gathering up any feathers 

 which may have been- dropped by the hawk herself. The order 

 in which these feathers fall is admirably arranged, so that each 

 new feather as it successively appears in the place of one that 

 has dropped out finds itself between two completely grown 

 feathers, either old or new, one on each side, between which it 

 can grow down with a protector right and left of it. The 

 deck feathers, i.e. the central feathers of the tail, are the first 

 to drop, and in the wings the " beam " or longest feathers are 

 about the latest to fall. By this time the smaller feathers of 

 the body and other parts will have mostly been changed. By 

 rights, of course, the change should be universal and complete, 

 but in peregrines and lanners it is often not so. Very commonly 

 one of the former may be seen with several brown feathers 

 interspersed among the light grey plumage of the first moult. 

 A falconer must be rather over-fastidious if he is put out at 

 this ; but there is more reason for complaint when rusty- 

 looking primaries, well worn in the nestling stage of existence, 

 persist in keeping their places amongst the brand-new shafts 

 and webs of flight feathers just come down. A blue hawk thus 

 parti-coloured, looks as if there was something wrong with her ; 

 and the owner is apt to fancy, whether rightly or wrongly I 

 cannot say, that the old feathers abnormally left in are not as 

 serviceable as new ones would have been. At anyrate, most 

 falconers consider it rather a feather in their cap to have their 

 hawks " clean moulted," that is to say, with a complete suit of 

 new feathers on their bodies. 



Occasionally it happens that without any apparent reason 

 an eyess drops out some of her nestling feathers almost as soon 

 as they have come fully down, or, as the old falconers termed it, 

 as soon as she is " summed." I have known a jack-merlin, well 

 hacked and fully trained, and in first-rate condition, drop his 

 two deck feathers while sitting quietly on the pole-cadge on 

 the way to be flown in the field, and have seen him just after- 



