The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

Hawks, if kept clean and frequently encouraged to bathe, are not much troubled with parasites. Young merlins from the nest are often infected with a flying tick, which does them no particular harm, and usually disappears when the little hawks begin to bathe. The way to get rid of them is to paint the body with a decoction of tobacco mixed with brandy. This is also the remedy for lice, which peregrines will sometimes get from a rook which they have killed. The same wash is to be applied to the nares and forehead of a hawk when troubled with mites. These very minute insects—otherwise called acarus or formica—sometimes establish themselves in and near the nostrils, and may be seen running about rapidly over the beak. They cause great annoyance, and if not put an end to will eat into the horn of the beak, and cause inflammation and other serious mischief. They dislike, however, the tobacco wash, and cannot keep their ground against it.

Corns and swelled feet are the result almost invariably of standing on hard and unpadded blocks or perches. They are, of course, both painful and also highly detrimental to the efficiency of a hawk, whose feet as a weapon of attack are only second in importance to her wings. The corn must be cut out, or the inflamed swelling lanced, and the foot must be bathed with some lotion, such as white of egg, vinegar, and rose-water, or with tincture of iodine. A very well-padded perch must be used afterwards, and a fortifying lotion frequently applied. Inflammation is sometimes set up by the prick of a thorn, when a hawk has trod upon a bramble, or grasped it when making a grab at a quarry which has put into a hedge. The worst form of corn is called “pin,” and is pointed like a nail. Lancing and lotions may cure it; but it is an obstinate complaint, often incurable; and the various unguents prescribed by ancient authors seem none of them to have been used with any great success.

When a claw or talon is broken by any accident, the falconer is advised to apply to it a plaster made of the gallbladder of a fowl, and to fit a sort of collar round the hawk’s neck to act as a guard, so that she cannot touch the place with her beak. The same thing may be done when a hawk has a wound or sore on the foot, and keeps picking at it, a practice not uncommon with merlins, which will actually eat away their own feet.

The blain is a watery vesicle in the second joint of the wing. It should be lanced, and the hawk kept quiet until the wing is strong again.

For a “snurt,” or cold in the head, Bert recommends the root of wild primrose dried in an oven and powdered. The powder is to be blown into the nares of the hawk. Or the leaves of the wild primrose may be distilled, and the nares bathed with the juice.

Craye is a stoppage in the “tewel,” or lower bowel. It is said that the meat should be washed in distilled haws, or a decoction of primprivet, or drawn through milk warm from the cow.

Rye is a swelling in the head, which is said to be produced by keeping the hawk without hot meat, and is cured in the way which may be conjectured.

Prynne is a malady of the eyes, for which it is recommended to bathe them with the juice of daisy leaves, or a decoction of powdered egg-shell, yolk of hard-boiled egg, and a quarter as much rock alum.

For a bruise Bert advises clarified honey, boiled with half as much stone pitch.

Some old writers declare that a hawk’s appetite may be improved by steeping her meat in claret and the yolk of an egg; that when she is slow at casting, or in digesting her food, she should have a mustard-seed made up with honey into a pill. In such cases she should certainly have plenty of tirings; and fresh water should be kept within her reach, so that she may sip it at any time if so inclined. Sweet things are good for a goshawk, which is something of a sweet-tooth. A good scouring for a sparrow-hawk is pounded sugar-candy and butter mixed with beef. Sugar-candy and olive oil are both good purgatives for getting rid of the internal fat or grease. For giving a tone to the stomach, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger are beneficial. And the most celebrated of all ingredients for compounding hawk medicines is “mummy.” One very distinguished modern falconer, having read in the ancient books endless references to this medicament, wrote to another equally distinguished authority to ask, “What is mummy?” The answer, which is too good not to be repeated here, was, “Mummy is mummy.” That is perhaps as much as the greatest Egyptologist can say!