"I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock."
The haggard falcon is a species of hawk found in North Wales and in Scotland. It breeds on high shelving cliffs and precipitous rocks. Had Shakespeare been an "amateur poacher" in his youth? He had a poacher's knowledge of the wild creatures. He knew how fresh the snake appears after it has cast its skin; how the hedgehog makes himself up into a ball and leaves his "prickles" in whatever touches him; how the butterfly comes from the grub; how the fox carries the goose; where the squirrel hides his store; where the martlet builds its nest, etc.
"Now is the woodcock near the gin,"
says FABIAN, in "Twelfth Night," and
"Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits,"
says CLAUDIO to LEONATO, in "Much Ado."
"Instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet,"
says CALIBAN, in The Tempest." Sings the fool in "Lear:"—
"The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo
so long
That it had it head bit off by it
young."
The hedge-sparrow is one of the favorite birds upon which the European cuckoo imposes the rearing of its young. If Shakespeare had made the house sparrow, or the blackbird, or the bunting, or any of the granivorous, hard-billed birds, the foster-parent of the cuckoo, his natural history would have been at fault.