The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

A bath must always be offered to a trained hawk at least twice a week, and oftener in fine and warm weather. And it is not a thing which can always be improvised very easily. The best baths are sunk in the ground, so that there are no upstanding sides round or under which a leash can get entangled. But of course, unless great care is taken, the ground round the edges of such a bath is apt to become slushy and dirty, if much used. Whenever it is impossible to sink the bath in the earth it is necessary that some person should be at hand when the hawks are bathing, so that if the leash gets entangled he may come to the rescue.

Many hawks have a tiresome way of jumping on and off the sides of the bath, and running round it—in fact, as Winchester boys say, “funking on the bank”—in complete oblivion of the fact that they are thereby hitching up their leashes. For such hawks it is best to take off the leash and substitute a creance three or four yards long, attaching the end of this to the block on which they are deposited at the side of the bath. All baths should be of a sufficient size. For gers they should be nearly a foot deep at least, and well over a yard in diameter. For the smallest jack-merlin they should be not less than four inches deep. A hawk will not fully enjoy her bath unless she can wade into it, if she chooses, up to her shoulders and over. In shallow water she is more or less uncomfortable. Like Alexander the Great, in the small world of antiquity, æstuat infelix angusto in limite; and her back and the nape of her neck are never properly wetted, however much she may splash about in the endeavour to throw the water over them. The bath should be tilted up, so that it is shallower at one end than the other, and the bather may get in, if she chooses, at the shallow end, and wade out as far as she likes towards the other. According to immemorial custom a few pebbles should be thrown in to lie on the floor of the bath. When the weather is very cold, a cup or two of hot water may be added, to take off the chill; and if the water used is taken from a deep and cool well it should be allowed to stand for some time in the sun before being put out for the hawks. Cemented basins in the ground make, of course, capital bathing-places. But they are troublesome to keep clean, and even to empty; and the surrounding edges are likely to become small quagmires. Perhaps the most serviceable bath is a common flat bedroom bath, sunk into a cavity in the ground, and removable at will. A pretty tall block or for short-winged hawks a bow-perch, should be placed near the bath, so that the bather, having finished her ablutions may at once jump on to it.

In some places it is possible to indulge the hawks with a natural bath. When there is in the neighbourhood a stream of clean water with a sandy or gravelly bottom and shelving banks, the hawk may be carried down to a suitable part of the bank, the block set up, and the creance attached. She may be left on the block while the falconer retires to a short distance, and will come back, when bathed, to her post. After the bath, every hawk should remain out, bareheaded, for about an hour, in the sun, if possible. She will busy herself first in spreading her feathers to the sun and wind, and then in pluming and arranging them—a work exceedingly agreeable to those hawks which are particular about their own appearance.

The lure will be more particularly referred to later on. It may suffice to say here that it is a rough imitation of some bird—or, if the hawk is to be trained to ground-game, of some beast—used as a bait to which the hawk is taught to come for food. It is attached to a strong cord or thong a yard or more long, and sometimes to a swivel. It is the invariable companion of the falconer in the field, though never allowed to be seen by the hawk, except when she is required to come to it. The lure should be a sort of magnet, operating to draw the hawk towards it as surely as iron will attract a magnetised needle.

A cadge is a most necessary apparatus when a man is the possessor of more than one hawk. The orthodox and historic cadge—such as one sees in representations of As You Like It on the stage, or, as once I remember, at a Lord Mayor’s Show—is a circular or square or oblong frame of wood, three or four feet across, having straps by which it can be suspended from the shoulders of a man, who in classic phrase is termed a “cadger,” and who stands or walks in the middle, with the frame surrounding him. At each corner of the frame is a small jointed leg, which can be hooked up when the cadge is being carried, and let down when it is to be deposited on the ground. The bars which form the body of the frame are padded on the top, and on these stand the hawks, hooded of course, and fastened by their leashes to the frame. The man with the cadge (whom in these days you will not address by his right title, unless you wish him to give you a month’s notice) will, if he is a sharp fellow, so carry the cadge that all or most of the hawks upon it face the wind. On windy days—and at rook-hawking time it is mostly pretty windy—the cadge should be rested as much as possible under the lee of some shelter, generally a rick. All hawks very much detest a wind; and should not be unnecessarily exposed to it. In fact, trained hawks must be, in this and in all other things, whether at home or in the field, subjected to as little vexation and annoyance as can be. Like other creatures, they have tempers of their own—sometimes very queer ones; and they have enough to put up with, as it is, when trained, without any extra trials that can fairly be spared them. A cadge is shown in the illustration.

A still greater luxury for the field, especially in rook-hawking, is the hawk-van, which is a sort of omnibus, fitted with screen-perches, and hung on very easy springs. In it are conveyed the hawks which are not for the time being in use, and also spare lures and other furniture and properties, not forgetting the luncheon-basket. Such a vehicle will be too pretentious, as well as too costly, for most private individuals, but it is used successfully by the Old Hawking Club, whose excellent arrangements and methods of training and managing hawks will be repeatedly noticed in these pages.

The box-cadge is a very simple apparatus used for the transport of hawks by train or other wheeled conveyance. It is nothing more than a frame resembling the body of a box—very often a box itself—without the lid. The four upper edges of the sides are padded to form perches. Holes are bored in the sides an inch or two below, through which the leashes can be passed and made fast. In the bottom of the box is sawdust to catch the mutes; and the hawks are put on, as naturally they would be, facing outwards, with their tails towards the inside of the box. You will be surprised, if you have never seen it tried, how small a box will accommodate six or eight great big hawks sitting in this simple fashion. By the bye, the box-cadge should be heavily weighted, to prevent upsetting or jolting, in case any hawk should unluckily bate off.

CADGE WITH PEREGRINES