The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

Mr. Riley, who has had so much success with the short-winged hawks, had thrown off a goshawk at a rabbit, which ran past some old hollow pollard ashes. As he passed, out jumped a fox and joined in the chase. This, however, boded no great good for the hawk; and her owner raised so unearthly a noise that reynard turned aside into the fence just as the goshawk took the rabbit only two or three yards away. On another occasion a rabbit was ferreted out by the side of a mill-pool. The ferret was close on his traces, and he jumped deliberately into the pool and swam across. Mr. Riley, who, like a good austringer, loves fair play above all things, thought it a shame to fly a wet rabbit, and would not throw off his goshawk. However, when the rabbit was on dry land he went so well that Mr. Riley let the hawk go. The rabbit was caught; and when he was taken from the hawk he was found to be quite dry! But whether his wet skin had been dried up by terror or by the violence of his exertions, or how else, is a mystery still unsolved. One day, having had bad luck with partridges, Sir Tristram, owned and trained by the same gentleman, was indulged with a pigeon. The big pointer included in the party, and which was a great ally of the goshawk, was at the time roaming about. As the hawk was pluming the pigeon on the ground, the dog came romping along. But when he had accidentally got within eight yards of Sir Tristram, the latter left his meal, and, flying straight for the pointer, gave him a good sound box on the ear, which sent him flying, the hawk then returning, well satisfied, to his food.

Hawks have been known to kill quarry with a leash and swivel still attached to their jesses. I have known a merlin with a long leash on follow a lark up in rings several hundred feet high, but she could not get on terms with him. What is, however, perhaps still more astonishing, I have seen a merlin with a whole dead lark in her foot pursue and strike down one that was uninjured. I was with a friend in a very open place. Each of us had a merlin to fly; and we walked different ways. My chance came first; and the lark, after a flight of moderate length, was taken under some open railings surrounding a dry pond. Hardly was this flight over, and the hawk beginning to plume her lark, when my friend’s hawk started after a lark from the opposite side of the pond. This lark happened also to make for the same place—not that the railings were at all likely to save him, but because he thought he could dodge round and round the posts and under the bars, and so put off the fatal moment. Larks seem often to think that any shelter is better than none at all. Accordingly, round and round the rails this second lark twisted and turned, passing sometimes within a yard or two of the place where my hawk stood on her dead lark watching the fun. The other hawk meanwhile made shot after shot, but could not foot her quarry. “She”—that was the name of my merlin—looked on more and more excitedly. At last she could stand it no longer, but getting up, dead lark and all, she mounted a bit and stooped. As the lark was diving underneath a rail she hit it, first shot, with a resounding whack—not with her feet, for they were both encumbered by the dead quarry, but with the dead quarry itself! The lark was, of course, not held, but projected forwards and downwards about three feet to the ground; and before he could get up again the other hawk was on him.

I was flying the same hawk in a very big stubble-field. A lark got up—a ground lark, but a fast one—and away they went, zigzagging along the surface of the field. They had gone a long way, but not far enough to be out of sight, when they both suddenly vanished. Running up, I found a deep depression in the ground, where years ago a big pit had been dug. This accounted for the disappearance. But what had happened after that? If the lark had been taken, where was he? And where was his captor? A small heap of dry sticks at the bottom of the hollow was searched in vain. There seemed to be no other hiding-place. At length a tiny hole was seen—the mouth of a rabbit-burrow. And out of this, in another half-minute, emerged the little hawk. The lark had gone in, and she after it, but after some groping about in the dark had failed to find the wily fugitive.

Only a few days afterwards the sister of this hawk started after a first-rate ringing lark. Both of them went out of sight, drifting at a great height towards a village a mile off. We ran towards it at our best pace, fearing some disaster; but when half-way to it saw the hawk coming back to the lure. Well, we were glad enough that she had not killed in any cottage garden, and, taking her back up-wind, went on with the day’s programme. As it was getting dark we had to walk through the same village on the way home. “Did you find your ’awk?” asked a cottager. “What hawk?” "Why, one of your ’awks chased a lark into the passage o’ th’ public there, and would a' caught ’im too, only there was a cat in the passage up and grabbed the lark before the ’awk was on ’im; and the ’awk looked as savage as thunder, and ’ooked it out, and went over there where you come from."

Bee Cottage stands desolate in a very big valley, with hills sloping gradually down to it on almost all sides. A ringing lark, with a merlin close at his heels, got within reach of this shelter from above the hillside to windward, and shot down to it like a bullet, with the hawk a few yards behind. It was too far to see from the hillside where, but he put in somewhere on the premises. A diligent search, however, in hedge, bush, coal-shed, and everywhere, led to no result. The door was shut and locked: so were the windows. No one seemed to have lived in the place for months. More searching, without any sign of lark or hawk. Yet they undoubtedly came down here, and never came out again. Outside, they could have been seen anywhere for half a mile. At last I saw that there was a small pane of glass gone in one of the downstair windows. Through that opening I looked; and there sat my lady, with a fluffy heap round her feet. So far, so good. But the room was full of bees, some dead, and some alive! What was to be done?

Colonel Sanford owned, hacked, and trained a very first-rate merlin called Orkney, which killed no less than ten larks in a single day in single flights, thus surpassing Queen, which took nine in single flights and one in double. This Orkney, after a very long flight, put a lark into a flock of sheep. But she marked the exact spot, underneath a sheep, where the fugitive stopped, and, taking perch on a neighbouring wether, kept her eye on the place. The sheep moved on, leaving the ground clear; and Orkney jumped as nearly as she could guess on the right spot. She failed, however, to grab the lark, which got up again and promptly took refuge under another sheep. Again the little hawk took stand on the next bleater, marking still more carefully the hiding-place of the quarry. Again the animals walked on, and this time perseverance was rewarded, and the lark was carried in triumph from the woolly protectors which had so nearly saved him. The same hawk once drove a lark into a small hole where she could see nothing of him but the tail. After some reflection she put in her beak and grasped steadily the feathers of the tail. Then with an unhurried pull she drew him far enough out of the hole to be able to get at him with her foot.

The best hawk I ever had was the merlin Eva. She was never beaten in fair flight by any lark during the whole of the moulting season; and she killed one (fully moulted, of course) as late as 7th November. One day she mounted an immense height after a ringing lark, bested him, and had had three shots, when a wild merlin joined in. After this the two hawks flew in concert just as if they had been trained in the same stable. Stoop for stoop, in regular alternations, they worked this plucky lark down by a few yards at each shift, neither I nor James Retford, who was running with me, being able to distinguish which was which. At last, when the lark had been driven down to within about 300 feet of the ground, there were two fine stoops in quick succession, the second of which was fatal. “Which is it?” I gasped, inquiring of the experienced falconer. “The wild one,” I think, he answered, sinking down breathless on the down. It was not, though. The wild hawk, furious, turned away, and, to vent her rage, made a savage shot at the ears of a hare which happened at the moment to be running along the valley; while Eva, descending slowly on the side of the down, had just recovered her breath by the time I got up.

On a second occasion Eva was almost equally high, and still ringing to get above her lark, when she suddenly spread her wings and swerved in her course. At the same moment Major Fisher, who was out on horseback, shouted, “The wild merlin!” But this time Eva was not going to join in any duet. The wild hawk had come up on a much lower level than the trained one had attained, possibly thinking that when Eva had done the hard work of the early stoops she might cut in and reap the benefit. At any rate, Eva was not to be so dealt with. Poising herself like a falcon when the grouse get up, she turned over and came down with every ounce of force she could muster right at the interloper. Of course she did not hit her. The two went off, stooping at one another, and were soon out of sight. Major Fisher rode after them, field-glass in hand, predicting that the wild hawk would chase Eva away. But in less than two minutes he espied a merlin coming back; and the trained hawk, in one long slanting fall from out of sight, descended daintily upon the lure held in her owner’s fist.

Queen was a first-rate merlin—sister of Jubilee, and also, though younger by a year, of Tagrag. She started at a ringing lark in a very open place, and it was a case of hard running, for there were no markers out. Before half a mile was covered they were over a sloping brow. By a desperate spurt I reached the ridge, when the hawk was in sight again. The ground sloped downwards for half a mile more; and in the valley, far away, was a sheep-fold, with sheep, shepherd, and a dog. For this fold the quarry was of course making. Anyhow, there would be the shepherd to mark; and a shout might reach even his rather inattentive ear. It was too far to see the hawk as she stooped; but when she threw up, and when she turned over, the sunlight caught the under-surface of her wing or tail, and showed where she was; and the last gleam came from painfully near the sheep. The running was easier downhill; and soon the shepherd was within hail. “Where is the hawk?” Reply inaudible up-wind. Thirty yards farther on the words could be heard, “Gone back where you come from.” Then, of course, she had lost the lark—rather luckily, having regard to the dog—and had passed me unnoticed, flying low. Well, the hill must be mounted again and the lure kept going. There, too, is surely a glimpse of Queen herself, just vanishing over the sky-line. She will be gone back to the place where her sister is pegged down. Ten minutes’ walking and running, and this place is in sight. But no sign of Queen. Five minutes’ more luring, and at last a hawk comes in sight,—not making directly for the lure, however, but hanging about and keeping well away. Strange conduct in this merlin, which rather liked the lure! And now she begins waiting on, and soaring,—a rare amusement with this very practical-minded hawk. Round and round, farther and farther down-wind, away we go, Queen hardly now even looking at the lure. Soon the hawk is too far to keep in sight without very fast running. Had I been fresh, probably I should have run hard. But I was far from fresh. And the behaviour of Queen was very queer.

Suddenly a new idea evolved itself. What if it was not Queen at all, but a wild merlin? It might be well to search a bit, anyhow, where Queen was last seen in her own undoubted personality. Searching, therefore, became the word—rather late in the day. And on a patch of new-ploughed fallow, barely distinguishable from the clods of brown earth, there stood my lady, with a litter of feathers round her, calmly eating the remains of a lark, and wondering what on earth I was about. She had taken the lark with that very last stoop for which I had seen her turn over, at the very edge of the sheep-fold, and, not liking the proximity of the dog, had carried her booty well away, taking the direction from which she had come, as the dog was on the other side. The wild hawk had been too late to join in the flight, but had seen the kill, and had come down perhaps with a vague idea of robbing Queen. Thinking better of any such attempt—which would not have ended pleasantly—she had been inquisitive as to the lure, and thinking the whole affair rather singular, had soared about, waiting to see what would happen next.