The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

If the lure system is chosen, the trainer goes to the hack field at feeding-times with as many lures as there are hawks at hack. Each lure must be so heavy that the hawk cannot move it at all, and the food must be attached so that it cannot be pulled off while uneaten. To the first hawk which comes up the first lure will be thrown out; to the second comer another; and so on till the last is served. Fighting will occur, no doubt, as it is impossible to prevent two hawks from coming down to one lure. But, then, the master of the ceremonies is at hand to separate the combatants, and keep each to her own lure, whereas at the board they have to just fight it out.

It is much the same thing with the fist-feeding system. But this can hardly be attempted with success when many big hawks are at hack together. As the trainer comes to the hack field, the hack hawks will come up, taking perch on his hand, his head, his shoulder, or wherever they can find a place. Two or three may generally be accommodated on the left forearm and fist. From his meat-box or feeding-pouch the trainer will take out with his right hand the prepared mouthfuls of food, and distribute them impartially among the hungry claimants. But if there is more than one hawk out, it will be found almost necessary, and certainly convenient, to use lures as well. After a few morsels have been distributed, these lures can be thrown down for all the hawks except one, which may finish her meal on the fist. One day one hawk may thus be retained, and another day another may take her turn, so that all keep up their habit of feeding freely there. Sparrow-hawks which are to be hacked on this system may be coped a little before they are turned out, for they have a way of digging in their claws to any soft place. But a goshawk can only be hacked to the fist if she or he is the only one out. The spectacle of a falconer (or ostringer, to use the correct word) with a goshawk’s claws firmly fixed in his head or shoulder would be a rare subject for a serio-comic portrait!

Meal-times for the hack hawks should be pretty punctually observed. Otherwise the hawks will become irregular in their habits, and the falconer will be compelled rather to dance attendance on them than they on him. The food may be left out on the board for an hour each time, and then removed, before it has become fly-blown or soaked with rain or frizzled in the sun. 6 to 7 a.m., noon to 1, and 6 to 7 p.m., are very good hours. And each time when the board is garnished and the food in readiness, the trainer may blow a whistle, or ring a bell, or sound a gong, to give notice from afar. At each meal there must be “calling over”; and if there is any absentee a mark must be recorded against his or her name.

A bath or two must be set out in the hack field. From about 9 to 11 a.m. it should be kept pretty full of clean fresh water; but it should be removed or emptied before noon. Most hawks are very capricious about bathing; and hobbies, which want it most, will seldom bathe at all. The others should be accustomed to bathe early in the day, so that when they are old they will not depart from this godly habit. Plenty of blocks should stand around, on which the bathed hawks may stand to sun and air themselves.

The longer the period of hack can be safely protracted the better for the hack hawk and her trainer. All the while she is learning to fly. During the latter part she is also learning to chase and to stoop. Here it is that the danger comes in. For in that ardour of youthful chase what kills may come! At first the random shots made from tall tree-tops at passing swallows will be wide enough of the mark. Even the young missel-thrushes or wood-pigeons which have frequented the hack ground will make light of the clumsy efforts made to cut them down; and the house-pigeons from the nearest dovecot will treat with supreme contempt the well-meaning but awkward stoops made at them. But every day finds the young hawks more expert, as well as stronger on the wing. The long feathers are now all down. The shafts harden, and no longer bend perceptibly as the wing-tips strike the air. Presently the flights at wild birds are no longer mere child’s play. The fugitives have to exert themselves to save their skins. Very likely the young hunters of the air are not at first altogether in earnest. Secure of their food at the hack board or lure or fist, and trusting to it for their subsistence, they are merely “having a lark” with the intruders on what has begun to be their domain. But it is increasingly difficult to know how much of their endeavours is play and how much real business. Be sure, however, that when any stoop, whether playful or not, proves successful, and the unfortunate victim is in the pursuer’s clutch, there will be no more play; and on some lonely patch of ground not fifty miles from the hack field there will be left a litter of feathers, the mortal remains of the first quarry killed by hawks of the year.

Let me here quote from my hawk diary: “12 noon; out to hack field, and follow a blackbird down Butt’s orchard hedge. Nearing the corner, blackbird (young cock) takes across the orchard. Drop him, winged, as he goes over the front hedge; and he falls in the hack field. Jubilee [eyess male merlin] is on a block in the middle of it, 90 yards off. It is his third day out. As the blackbird falls, he starts, and, stooping at it as it runs, takes it, kills it, and begins to plume it like a wild hawk before I get up.” Pretty sharp work this for a little hawk that had never used his wings till the day before yesterday. But this capture of a winged bird was not counted as a “kill”; and Jubilee was left out for a good eight days more, and might probably have been left a few longer. Hack hawks know no sentimental scruples about taking their prey on the ground. Here is another extract from a hawk diary: “6.30 a.m., out and fed hack hawks on lure. ‘She’ not visible. At 7 saw her on wire fence, half-way across park. As I got near with lure she started, and, flying low over the ground away from me, turned suddenly, and dropped on some bird in the grass. Was pluming it, when heifers came right up to her. Then lifted, and carried into the lower belt. Quarry looked like a missel-thrush.” The same day “She” was taken up. It is a risky thing to leave hawks out after they have once begun serious and successful chasing. Yet it is a thousand pities to take them up too soon, just when they are improving most rapidly. Peregrines may be left out, with heavy hack-bells, for four weeks or occasionally more. Merlins seldom more than three weeks. If the hack place and its neighbourhood are very open, and the wild birds about are few, there is less danger, and less need for hurry. But when the trees and bushes are well stocked with wood-pigeons, thrushes, and small birds, beware.

It is now that the advantage will be seen of putting distinctive jesses on the hawks. The trainer must watch the board carefully. He may not be able to get within 80 yards of it. But from his hiding-place, be it far or near, he must tell over the number of his charges every morning, noon, and evening, so as to see that all have been down. A field-glass may be necessary to identify each visitant. Brown-jess may come down at 6 a.m., take a light breakfast, and be off. White-jess may not appear till 12; and even then no signs of Black-jess. The case begins to look serious. But at 12.50 at last a hawk comes down. Is this the truant? Or is it Brown-jess again, with her luncheon appetite come on? The glass will tell you quickly if the colour of the jesses worn corresponds to the one name or the other. But if both hawks wore the same coloured jesses, you could not say. If the last comer is Black-jess—only delayed till so late by mere want of appetite—she may be left out, perhaps for some days longer. And the extra days’ exercise will undoubtedly make her a faster and stronger hawk. But if you cannot tell one hawk from another, it will be impossible for you to know when one has missed two successive meals or not. If Black-jess absents herself all day until the evening repast, the inference is strong that in the morning she killed something for herself. If she keeps away for a whole day, that conclusion becomes almost a certainty. She must be taken up when the first chance occurs. Here, however, arises a fresh difficulty. If it is a tiercel who so absents himself—especially a small tiercel—the presumption that he has killed for himself is pretty well conclusive. But what if it is a falcon? Her brother may have chased and killed; and the sister—a slow hawk who could not catch anything for herself—may have seen the flight, or seen the tiercel pluming his dead quarry, and then come up, and by her superior strength driven him off, and pirated the spoil. You, wrongly inferring that it was she who killed the quarry, will take her up the next day, quite prematurely, and leave the real captor, who is much more worthy of bonds and imprisonment, to remain in dangerous liberty. The same doubt may arise when the absentee is an extra strong and extra greedy bird of either sex. That she or he has breakfasted or dined out is, of course, equally clear. But was it the captive of her own wings and talons that she devoured, or that of a weaker, but cleverer, hawk? These are questions impossible to answer, unless some person has actually seen what occurred. The safest plan, though not the most magnanimous, when such evidence cannot be got, is, when one hawk has clearly been killing, to take the whole lot up.

Hack hawks are as various in their habits at hack as they are at all other times. Some are lazy, some active, some both by fits and starts. One will be playful, and find a childish delight in chasing butterflies or falling leaves. Others, surly and ill-tempered, ready on slight provocation to make vicious stoops at their brethren or sisters. Some will sit for hours sullenly on a post; others will fly long distances for their own amusement, and soar aloft to a good height. These are the most promising. The falconer, if he keeps his eyes open, will have learnt before hack is over pretty well the relative speeds and particular dispositions of his wards. Rarely are these early indications falsified in after-life. But a backward hawk is not necessarily a bad hawk. During quite the last days of hack a hawk which had seemed rather dull and slow will sometimes wake up, and put on pace in an astonishing way, until from being a member of the awkward squad she comes to rival the leaders of the whole school in activity and speed. But a sulky and moping hawk seldom turns out first-rate.

Speed is the great desideratum in a hawk. It is like the “big battalions” in an army; like a good eye to a cricketer. When people complain about bad-tempered hawks, it is often the trainer who is to blame. But in the matter of speed, as shown at hack time, the trainer is hardly, if at all, responsible. Bad temper is a nuisance, no doubt, and a difficulty. But want of speed is worse. It is incurably destructive of good sport. And here, speaking of the relative speeds of hawks at hack, I will ask leave to relate two anecdotes. Queen, a powerful and speedy, but not very brilliant flier, went off with a rabbit’s head, pursued by her sister and two brothers. Winding about along the side of a long hedge, now one side and now the other, she evaded all their stoops, and, after reaching the end of the hedge, where there were some elms and oaks, dodged rapidly in and out among them, loaded as she was, throwing out all the pursuers, and finally conveying her booty to a safe corner, where she discussed it all by herself in peace.

On his eleventh day of hack, Jubilee, the male merlin already referred to, was sitting with his two sisters and one brother in the branches of a fallen tree in the hack field, under which I was seated, garnishing the lures for their delectation a little later on. Suddenly the little hawk started at his best pace right down the field. I supposed that he was after some blackbird in the far hedge. But before reaching it he turned, and began mounting as he came back towards me. I looked round, and for the first time saw that a wild kestrel had come over into the field, and was dodging the stoops made at him by the remaining merlins. Now this kestrel was one of a brood which had been flying at hack under their parents’ care in a neighbouring field. They were already strong on the wing before the merlins were turned out; and I had been rather fearing, when I discovered their near presence, that they might do the young merlins a bad turn. No encounter had, however, as yet occurred between the two families. The kestrel had at first little difficulty in eluding the stoops of the three merlins, who seemed not much in earnest. But when Jubilee came over, at some height in the air, there was a different tale to tell. With his first stoop he made the wild hawk cry out; at the second he almost feathered him, and made him shuffle off to the orchard near at hand, where, swirling round the tree-trunks, he threw out his assailant, and made off to a tall elm. Here, no doubt, he fancied he was safe, especially as the other hawks, on Jubilee’s appearance, tailed off. But not a bit of it. Throwing himself well up above the elm, the little jack dashed down at the enemy in the tree, dislodged him, and with a back-handed stoop drove him down to the ground, hunted him all across a meadow, grazing him at every shot he made, and lost him in a big orchard farther on. The pace of the wild hawk was very poor in comparison with that of this half-tame lure-hacked merlin. It seemed as if the latter could have given him ten yards in a hundred. In straight-ahead flying, in mounting, and in throwing up, the kestrel was completely outpaced. Yet before now trained merlins, as I have heard tell, have been outflown and chased by a wild kestrel. I should not like, and do not ever expect, to own such a trained merlin.