"No surer than our falcon yesterday,
Who lost the hern we slipt him at";
but he afterwards changed "him" to "her."
The hawk was "hooded," that is, had a hood put over its head, until it was slipped, or let fly at the game; and to this we have several allusions in Shakespeare.
In Henry V. (iii. 7. 121) the Constable, sneering at the Dauphin, says of his boasted valor: "Never anybody saw it but his lackey: 't is a hooded valour; and when it appears it will bate." To bate, or bait, was to flutter the wings, as the bird did when unhooded. In this passage there is a pun on bate in this sense and as meaning to abate or diminish.
In Othello (iii. 3. 260), when the Moor has been told by Iago that Desdemona may be false, he says:—
"If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I'd whistle her off and let her down the wind,