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 larkor 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 thedown. 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 hillmust 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.
Ruy Lopez was a jack which rather fancied himself, and had something in his style of flying of the tactics of a haggard peregrine. That is, he would start in a different direction from the quarry, so that strangers would suppose he had no designs upon it, and afterwards turn and make an immensely long stoop at it all across the air. But on one occasion he had a very close personal experience of the stooping of peregrines. He was lost; and no one knew anything of his whereabouts. It so happened that James and William Retford, Major Fisher’s falconers, wereout with a pointer and a falcon named Black Lady. The dog stood, but in a queer and rather doubtful way; and Black Lady was thrown off. When she had got to her pitch the men ran in. But instead of partridges, there got up out of the swedes the unexpected shape of Ruy Lopez, he having been quietly discussing there a lark which he had just killed. Down came the falcon, better pleased, as hawks are, at such a chase than one at a mere partridge. And the falconers describe the flight as beyond measure exciting. They thought each stoop would be the last, and declared that the small hawk saved himself several times by a hair’s-breadth. At length, however, he got in under a stook of wheat. No doubt the falconers thought it was a near thing. And possibly it was; but as far as my own experience goes, trained peregrines cannot get within a yard of a good trained merlin. I have seen them try; and the merlin has shifted with contemptuous ease. Major Fisher, however, as already mentioned, had a tiercel which made it very hot for a wild merlin, and, as he thinks, very nearly caught it. I have seen one of his eyess tiercels take a kestrel with apparent ease at the first stoop. But that is certainly quite a different matter.
The already long list which has been given of mischances and maladies which beset trained hawks is even yet not complete. In India the wild eagles are a serious nuisance, coming down from the high altitudes at which they soar, and obliging the hawks to shift for their own safety just when they are expected and expecting to give a good account of their own quarry. In England, hawks which are pegged out in any but a quiet private place are exposed to the attack of any chance dog. I do not know that cats will deliberately attack even the smallest jack, either by day or by night. But a tame cat which had gone mad once made an onslaught on the trained peregrines belonging to the O. H. C., and with such ferocity that quite a large number of them died of their wounds. Mr. A. W. Reed, an experienced and enthusiastic amateur falconer, had some very valuable hawks, including a ger and some Eastern varieties, pegged out on a lawn in Essex. A neighbouring householder, being troubled by sparrows, laid down poisoned grain. The sparrows took the grain, and, dying as they flew over the place where the hawks were, fell down on the ground near the blocks. Of course the hawks ate them; and, equally of course, the hawks were poisoned. And, advice being taken, it was considered useless to take proceedings against the offender.
Cases of deliberate hawk-murder are now punishable bylaw. All falconers are highly indebted to Mr. E. C. Pinckney for having demonstrated this fact conclusively in a local tribunal. He extracted £10 in damages from a neighbour who had shot at and killed his game-hawk, although the latter set up the usual defence, pretending that he was unaware that the hawk was a tame one. The judge held that, as he was aware that his neighbour kept trained hawks, if he shot at one, he did so at his own peril, just as a man would who shot at a house-pigeon or escaped parrot. More lately still, Mr. A. W. Reed has been awarded £5 at the Kingston County Court as damages from a neighbour who had wilfully shot his trained peregrine. The precedents, as far as they go, are most valuable. Unfortunately they do not, of course, go very far. But a falconer will be well advised, having regard to them, to send notices in registered letters, when going into any district, to all such people as are likely to prove mischievous.
INDEX
[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L][M] [N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [W] [Y]