The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

Goshawks should never be moulted in company, and the bigger falcons only when known to be good-tempered, and that with a companion of the same sex. Tiercels, unless especially cantankerous, may moult in the same room, and the same thing may be said of female sparrow-hawks. All the other small hawks may moult in company with others of the same sex. In fact, in the case of merlins and kestrels there is no harm in associating the two sexes, provided all occupants of the club-room are kept, as they should be, constantly provided with plenty of food. I am, however, disposed to think that when merlins are loose together a good deal of chevying about takes place, which is apt to be dangerous to the growing feathers when the moult is nearly over.

The moulting-room should never be cold, and still less damp. In very wet and chilly weather artificial heat may be used in moderation. For instance, there may be a small fire in the room underneath, or the flue of a lighted fire may pass up one of the sides of the room itself. The window also should by all means face the south rather than the north. The moult is quicker and better when a hawk is kept warm, whereas anything like a chill may check, or at least retard, it seriously. Yet there is, of course, a difference between warmth and stuffiness. Of the two evils, however, I am inclined to believe, with the ancients, that over-ventilation is worse than over-closeness—if, at least, you are anxious to get quickly through with the moult.

The food for a moulting hawk should be nutritious without being too heavy. It should be good and very plentiful. In fact, the bird should be able to eat whenever she has a fancy to, and to eat as much as she will. Accordingly, each time that rations are served out they should be ample to last until the next supply will be forthcoming. In quality the viands may be rich and high-flavoured, if the hawk can stomach them. John Barr moulted a falcon in an exceedingly short space of time by supplying her constantly with the heads, necks, and pinions of fat ducks, keeping her mostly under a small tented shelter, upon the outside of which a summer sun beat down with almost ferocious force. He declared that the feathers, nourished by the fat contained in these succulent meals, came down broader and stronger, as well as faster, than he had ever known in other instances. Thus a “grene goose” was anciently recommended for moulting hawks’ diet, and on the same principle an ideal food for moulting merlins or sparrow-hawks would be fat quails. These little hawks are, however, often nauseated by eating birds which are very fat. The heads, necks, and pinions of fowls should always be given freely to moulting hawks, not only because the meat on them is of a good kind, but because they make capital tirings, and so provide exercise at a time when exercise is very difficult to find. Mice for the small hawks, rats for goshawks, and rabbits for the other big hawks, should also be often supplied; and plenty of castings should be given, or the internal fat which accumulates in a moulting hawk will either rob her of her appetite or cause some obstinate and perhaps dangerous disorder.

It is not to be supposed that the ancient falconers, who were so fond of physicking their hawks, could omit to discover artificial methods of expediting the moult. A couple of specimens of fashionable prescriptions may be worth quoting for just what they are worth: “When ye meane to further the mewing of your hawke, take of the snayles that have shelles, stampe them shelles and all, strayning them through a cloth, and with the oyle that comes thereof wash hir meate two or three tymes. Also take of the snayles that lie in running streames, give your hawke of them in the morning; for that will both scowre hir and nourish hir greatly, and setteth hir up and maketh hir to mew apace. Master Michelin, in his Book of the King of Cyprus, sayeth thus: ‘Cut an adder in two parts and seeth him in water, and with that water and wheate togither fede your pullets, pigeons, turtles, and other birds which you intend to allow your hawkes that are slack to mewe, and soone after they shall mewe their feathers apace.’”

The personal attention paid to a moulting hawk varies very widely. Some falconers make frequent visits to the room, and habituate the captive to come to the fist, and be carried and handled and maintained in a very tame state. The ancient falconers—and some of our own time—gave themselves very little trouble, and left the moulting hawks pretty much to their own devices. Probably the one course has nearly as much to commend it as the other. It seems more amiable and business-like to keep up, even during the off-season, that friendly intercourse with your hawk which is natural among friends, and even some of those habits of obedience which you have so laboriously taught. On the other hand, while you are giving your hawk a holiday, you may almost as well give her a 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 afterwards fly as well as ever, and give a good account of a ringing lark. When any such little mishap occurs the hawk must of course be kept as high fed and fat as he can be consistently with proper obedience. The jack I speak of found himself, in consequence of his misfortune, promoted to a position of special favour among his fellows. An extra allowance of the best sort of food was daily permitted to him. When he flew well—which, by the way, he always did—he had nearly as much as he liked to eat. And when by reason of this very high feeding he refused to come to the dead lure, a lark was generally walked up by beaters driving towards him as he sat on a rick, so that he might be indulged with the flight for which his vain little soul was longing. Or, if this could not be done, he was left on his self-chosen perch until one of the other hawks went up after a ringing lark, when he would come up like a meteor across the sky, and join in, sometimes to the great chagrin of the other hawk, which had started under the impression that she was to have the field to herself. In due course the new feathers grew down, having the pretty blue-grey hue of the adult plumage, and thus contrasting conspicuously with the five brown feathers on either side of them. Before the lark season was over they were fully down; and my lord was quite a curiosity, looking rather as if some waggish under-falconer had imped the two middle feathers of his tail with a couple of wood-pigeon’s feathers instead of the proper ones.

A hawk which has once been moulted in captivity is said to be “intermewed.” When the moulting hawk, which has been mewed in the old-fashioned way to get through the process, is “summed” with her new suit, the falconer must not suppose that the troubles of the ordeal are over. Before the newly bedizened beauty can be flown again with any success she must be got into condition, and, if suffered to get wild during her long incarceration, she must undergo a fresh ordeal of reclamation. The old falconers give elaborate directions for conditioning a hawk when “drawn” from the mews. It would be more tedious than profitable to reproduce their prescriptions, most of which recommend nostrums too fanciful for this matter-of-fact age. Almost as well might a modern trainer be advised to get his man fit by means of the terrific potions and purges upon which Caunt and Belcher were brought into condition. In these days we are partly too timid, and partly, I suspect, also too lazy, to compound together some score of ingredients, more or less poisonous or distasteful, and administer the product to an unwilling patient in the rather sanguine expectation that it will cure and not kill. A simpler treatment is preferred for producing a result which is, after all, simple enough. The problem is to get rid of that accumulation of fat which, in a time of almost complete inactivity and overfeeding, has encumbered the heart and liver and other internal organs of the hawk, and until it is removed will make her dull, sluggish, and unmanageable. This should certainly be done by medicine of some kind; and the sooner it is done, after the flight feathers are fully down, the better. Any attempt to reduce the superfluous fat, or to produce an appetite by means of mere hunger, would be a great mistake. The hawk would lose in strength and weight much more than she gained in condition; and it would be a long time before, by dieting alone, you could get rid of the mischief which a couple of doses would almost put an end to immediately. A simple purge and a simple emetic should be administered in any case; and if the hawk is of a vivacious disposition, and has not grown dull in the mews, this may be found a sufficient physicking. For the former nothing seems to be better than rhubarb. A convenient mode of dosing a peregrine is in the form of a Cockle’s pill, which may either be wrapped up in tissue paper and pushed down the throat with a small stick, or concealed in a tough morsel of meat which the hawk swallows bodily. A merlin or female sparrow-hawk should not have more than half one of these pills for a dose; and a jack or musket even less than this. Goshawks may have more than the small hawks, but not so much as a peregrine. For those who want a more orthodox and time-honoured prescription, the following may serve:—“Take Aloes Cicotrine and graines of Filander, otherwise called Stavesaker, and Cassia Fistula, as much of the one as of the other, to the mountenance of a beane, togither, and when ye have beaten it into powder put it into a henne’s gut of an inch long, tied fast at both ends: then convey it into hir in the morning, so as she may put it over, and that must be after shee hath cast, if she had any casting at al. Then set your hawke by the fire or in the sunne, and feede hir with a quicke chicken, or some other live warme meate two houres after.” Even in those days, however, it is plain that there were some misguided heretics who rebelled against the long-winded precepts of the esoteric school of hawk-doctors. "Neverthelesse, in stead of the sayd aloes, ye may at youre discretion use common pilles, such as Potecaries give men to make them loose-bodyed. And many are of opinion that they be much better than that other of aloes: for the pilles drive downward and scowre more strongly and with greater effect."

It was an almost invariable rule with the old falconers to give washed meat to a hawk after the moult. Many of them, indeed, began to do so for about ten or fifteen days before the end of the moult; and in the case of hawks which are now intended to be flown as soon as possible, some preliminary steps of the kind should be taken while the last feathers are growing fully down. Washed meat is better than short rations in such a case as this, where if you reduce the hawk’s strength a little it is no great matter as long as she does not get thin withal. But the grand desideratum for a newly-moulted hawk is plenty of carrying. The effect of this discipline upon a wild-caught hawk has been already described; it is quite as magical, and still more speedy in its results in the case of one which has become wild in the mews. This is one of the good things of which one cannot have too much. It is more than one man’s work to carry a single hawk as much as she ought to be carried when fresh from the moult. If, therefore, there is not a man available for each, let the one which is not being carried be pegged down at her block if it is fine, or confined to the perch if it is not, and provided with a tiring until there is someone who can take her again on his fist. Tirings must be kept going assiduously for the sake of the exercise, and for the first few days all food that is not tirings should be given on the fist. In short, the trainer must go through, with a moulted hawk, most of the same processes, more or less modified according to the character of the hawk, as he went through when first reclaiming and making her to the lure.

Long-winged hawks are, of course, less troublesome to reduce to orderly habits after the moult than sparrow-hawks or goshawks. But then they require longer to get into wind. For this purpose they must be called off to longer and longer distances, and made to stoop hard at the lure. At first their flight will be very heavy, and their desire to mount nonexistent. After a minute’s stooping at the lure they will have their mouths open. It will perhaps be quite difficult to keep them on the wing. But they must not be excused; and the much-enduring trainer must have the patience to wait, swinging the lure until it pleases my lady to come to it, and be keen in the cause. It is altogether impossible to say how long it will be from the time when she is taken out of the moulting-room to the day when she can take the field once more. A haggard, dosed successfully, and dieted with lucky precision, may surprise you by getting fit quite quickly, whereas an eyess which you expected to bring into fettle in a few days may prove more restive than she did when taken up from hack. There is luck as well as skill in the treatment of each hawk. But carrying is the sine quâ non; and the more a man carries his hawk the better chance he has of observing how his treatment works, and whether it should be modified in one way or another. The best hawks, when well moulted, will often become even better the next year; and there is no reason why a moderate or even a poor hawk should not improve. Newly-moulted hawks should not be brailed, nor allowed to be bareheaded in any place where they are likely to bate. And of course great care will be taken for some little time that they are not left in a damp or draughty place or in the rain.