56 FALC0N1DÆ.
frequently flown at Partridges, and sometimes at Magpies.
The young of the year, on account of the red tinge of their
plumage, are called, the female, a Eed Falcon, and the male,
a Bed Tiercel, to distinguish them from those which have
accomplished their first moult. Eyas, or Nyas, is the name
ot a young bird taken from the nest, as distinguished from the
Peregrine or Passage-Hawk, a young bird caught during the
season of migration ; while Haggard is used for a bird caught
after the first moult is completed, and reclaimed. If kept
over a moult, they were then called Intermewed Hawks. The
term Gentil Falcon seems to have often had a general rather
than a particular meaning, and the bird so called by Pennant
is certainly a Gos-Hawk, while the Lanner of the same
author is a young female of the present species, at which
age it bears some resemblance to the true Lanner, Falco
lanarius, which probably has never been killed in this
country.
Sir John Sebright, in his ‘ Observations on Hawking,’
thus describes the mode of taking Herons:—“ A well-
stocked heronry in an open country is necessary for this
sport, and this may be seen in the greatest perfection at
Didlington in Norfolk, the seat of Colonel Wilson.* This
heronry is situated on a river, with an open country 011
every side of it. The herons go out in the morning to rivers
and ponds at a very considerable distance, in search of food,
and return to the heronry towards the evening.
I t is at this time that the falconers place themselves
in the open country, down wind of the heronry ; so that
when the herons are intercepted on their return home, they
are obliged to fly against the wind to gain their place of
retreat. When a heron passes, a cast (a couple) of hawks
is let go. The heron disgorges his food when he finds that
Professor Schlegel in his great work has shown this derivation to be an error
and the name appears to have been given from the old belief that each nest
contained three young birds, of which two were females and the third and
smallest a male.—Traité de Fauconnerie, p. 1, note.
* Subsequently Lord Berners. Didlington is now (1871) the property of Mr.
Tyssen Amhurst, and the heronry, though its site is changed, still exists.
PEREGRINE FALCON. 57
he is pursued, and endeavours to keep above the hawks by
rising in the a ir; the hawks fly in a spiral direction to get
above the heron, and thus the three birds frequently appear
to be flying in different directions. The first hawk makes
his stoop as soon as he gets above the heron, who evades it
by a shift, and thus gives the second hawk time to get up
and to stoop in his turn. In what is deemed a good flight,
this is frequently repeated, and the three birds often mount
to a great height in the air. When one of the hawks seizes his
prey, the other soon binds to him, as it is termed, and buoyant
from the motion of their wings, the three descend together
to the ground with but little velocity. The falconer must
lose no time in getting hold of the heron’s neck when he is
011 the ground to prevent him from injuring the hawks. It
is then, and not when he is in the air, that he will use his
beak in his defence. Hawks have, indeed, sometimes, but
very rarely, been hurt by striking against the heron’s beak
when stooping; but this has been purely by accident, and
not (as has been said) by the heron’s presenting his beak to
his pursuer as a means of defence. When the heron flies
down wind, he is seldom taken, the hawks are in great
danger of being lost, and as the flight is in a straight line,
it affords but little sport.” *
Thompson, in his ‘ Birds of Ireland,’ mentions that a
Peregrine Falcon “ having caught a landrail which it was
about to eat on a house-top, instantly gave chase to another
rail that was sprung, and, still retaining its first victim,
secured the second with its other foot:—it bore off both
together.”
In illustration of the habit of the quarry to “ take down wind,” Mr. W.
Aldis Wright, one of the editors of the ‘ Cambridge Shakespear,’ has kindly
supplied an explanation given him by a friend, no less ingenious than simple, of
the often-quoted passage in ‘ Hamlet —“ I am but mad north-north-west: when
the wind is southerly I know a Hawk from a Heronshaw.” Hawking in the
morning, under the old system the best time for sport, if the wind be from the
north-west the birds fly so that any person watching them has the sun in his eyes,
and is therefore notable easily to tell the Hawk from the Heron. When the wind
is southerly the birds fly away from the sun, and any one can know which is
which. Hamlet’s application of the old saw was to show that his madness was
much akin to other men’s sanity.
VOL. I . I