VIRTUE AND VICE 265 



is a good one when she isn't. A good deal of the restlessness 

 which makes a hawk flit about with her quarry is due to her 

 being short of exercise. If, therefore, you can make your hawk 

 fly more, either at the lure or in the field, than she has a mind 

 to, she is much less likely to go fooling about before attending 

 to the business of feeding herself. Of course it is very difficult 

 to do this, as twenty or thirty miles more or less is a mere exercise 

 canter for a peregrine. But many trained hawks get a great deal 

 less than this in a whole day. 



There is a device which I should like to see tried with a 

 carrying hawk, but it requires some patience and good temper. 

 Get some stuffed birds of the proper kind, at which you mean 

 to fly your hawk ; use them, unweighted, as lures, and when 

 the hawk has /taken them and come down, let go the string 

 and approach her cautiously with food in hand as if you were 

 making in to her after killing a real bird. If she bolts, let her 

 go and make what she can of the stuffed bird. About twenty 

 minutes after you will have her back, furious, but perhaps less 

 ready to bolt away from the food in your hand — a sadder, but 

 possibly a wiser, hawk. 



When a hawk, being carried on the fist bareheaded, ready 

 to be thrown off at quarry, keeps jumping off in a tiresome 

 way at nothing, ten to one she is not quite ready to fly. 

 Better put on her hood and let her wait for an hour or so, and 

 go on with another hawk, if you have one to fly, and, if not, 

 light a pipe. Hurry no man's hawks, not even your own. 



It would be rather a misnomer to call soaring a vice. This, 

 which is one of the most beautiful accomplishments of the wild 

 falcon, is the natural mode of taking daily exercise. To see it 

 in perfection, look at a wild peregrine or a wild hobby — you 

 have there what enthusiasts describe as the poetry of motion. 

 All hawks, eagles and vultures soar by nature. It is their way 

 of stretching their wings, and of taking the air where it is cool 

 and fresh. Kestrels do a sort of humble soaring in search of 

 their food, and hobbies actually feed themselves, like swifts, on 

 the wing. To say, therefore, that a trained hawk which adopts 

 this orthodox method of keeping herself fit is thereby commit- 

 ting a fault, is rather hard upon her. Nevertheless it is a very 

 vexatious habit, when over-indulged in, and, speaking from a 

 practical point of view, is not to be too much encouraged 

 Hobbies, when flown in the middle of the day, even sharp-set, 

 will stay up constantly for a quarter of an hour and even more, 

 taking little apparent notice of the swung lure, or at the most 



