When she has taken a few pigeons in this manner, call her as before to a live fowl held by the legs, but this time call her to it from some distance. As soon as she comes and seizes it, which she ought to without hesitation, kill it, and gorge her on it.

As soon as her training reaches this point, she should be confined in a cupboard, some seven feet long by three and a half broad. The cupboard, which should first be thoroughly swept and cleaned, must be kept to such a pitch of darkness, that it will be impossible for its occupant to distinguish the day from the night. If much more light be admitted, the hawk, by bating against the door or wall, will probably do herself some irremediable injury. She should be fed every evening, three or four hours after dark, by the light of a lamp, being taken on the fist for the purpose, and allowed to eat her fill. Her principal food should be sparrows and young pigeons, but in any case she must have constant change of diet. When so gorged that she can eat no more, offer her water in a cup, flicking the water with the finger to attract her attention to it. If she drink, so much the better, let her drink her fill: but if she evince no inclination to drink, remove the water and replace her in her prison. This treatment must be continued for at least forty days.

After the expiration of forty days, reduce the quantity of her food for four or five nights, and carry her by lamp light; in fact treat her in every respect like a wild-caught hawk. Evening by evening, the amount of carriage must be increased, until she is thoroughly “manned,”[66] when she will be ready to obey her master’s every behest.

The above method has certain special advantages. During the rest in confinement, the hawk’s bones will become thoroughly hard and set;[67] and from the high feeding during that forty days, she will attain the growth and strength of a twelvemonth; and her toes will be long and thick; and even large quarry, such as chukor, pigeons, and black-bellied sand-grouse, will stand a poor chance of breaking away from her clutches.

It is of course understood that, if destined for large quarry, she must never have been flown at sparrows nor even given any small bagged bird whole, from the day you first get her till the present. She must be made to forget that there is such a thing as small quarry in existence, or that any bird is fit for food except partridge, and sand-grouse, or such large game.

Eyess Sparrow-hawk.—I will now instruct you in another method of training the Sparrow-hawk, by which, in the field, it will be no whit inferior to the goshawks of most falconers. In the early Spring, get some trusty fowler to mark down a tree, in which a pair of Sparrow-hawks are “timbering.”[68] A strict watch must be kept on the nest, and the first time the parent birds are observed carrying food to their young, the tree must be scaled, and all the nestlings, except the largest female, removed. The nest will contain from three to five nestlings. The whole attention of the parent birds will now be bestowed on the solitary occupant, which, by thriving apace, will fully repay the care lavished on it. The nestling must be inspected by the fowler almost daily, until the whole of the quill feathers of the tail and wings are out.[69] Then four or five days before it is ready to fly, he must “seel”[70] its eyes while it is still in the nest and remove it, substituting for it, one of the nestlings originally abducted. The nest will not then be forsaken: the parent birds will rear the restored substitute, and will year after year build in the same tree.

The nestling, its eyes “seeled,” must be conveyed carefully home, and its education conducted in precisely the same manner as already described. When taken up at the end of the forty days of confinement, your friends will probably delight you by mistaking her for a male goshawk,[71] so great will be her size. What a goshawk will do, she will do.

The author has also adopted the above plan with nestlings of the Shāhīn, the Saker and the Qizil Goshawk, with eminently satisfactory results. He humbly begs leave to add that the idea is an original one.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] Bāsha P.; qirg͟hī, qirqī, etc. T. (Accipiter nisus).