The Goshawk
No distinction was made when we were talking about hack and the manning
of hawks between the different species to which they happen to belong.
Nor is it necessary to insist much upon the distinction even down to
the time when they have been reclaimed and are on the point of being
entered. But whereas all those which we have been considering are
"hawks of the lure," we have seen that the short-winged hawks, which
remain now to be dealt with, are "hawks of the fist." Let us see what
modifications must be made in the system of training when it is the
latter that we are preparing for the field.
In the first place, some authorities question altogether the utility
of hack for eyess goshawks or sparrow-hawks. Others maintain that it
is quite sufficient to let them loose in a shed or empty room until
their feathers are strong. This latter plan seems a very poor sort of
compromise between hack and no hack. The eyesses so turned loose get
no real liberty, and nothing at all like the amount of exercise which
they would if they were in the open. Yet as compensation for what they
thus lose they get no advantage that one can easily understand. Without
pretending to decide the point in question, I may perhaps venture to
say that any hawk's muscles and eyes, as well as her general health,
are more likely to be improved by a free life in the open air than in
a sort of big cage. If they are not hacked at all they may of course
be very early made to the fist and the hood, and will be manned and
in flying order much quicker than hack hawks. Whether this will be of
advantage or not, circumstances alone can decide; but a short-winged
hawk can generally be allowed a fairly long hack, and yet be ready
for her trainer's use as soon as the latter requires her services.
Of course it is not safe if there are other hawks out at hack to let
goshawks out anywhere in the vicinity; and I should be very doubtful
about the expediency of hacking sparrow-hawks in the same place as
merlins or kestrels. In fact it is not safe even to peg out a goshawk
in any place where hack merlins can come. I remember an unfortunate
jack--the smallest I ever saw--to whom his owner had given the not
very classical name of Jones. This hawk was out at hack in a rather
promiscuous way, killing sparrows for himself occasionally, and at
other times coming to the lure. I think he knew we laughed at him, and
thought that life in general was a sort of joke. But one day the fancy
seized him to go and fraternise with a big young goshawk which was out
on her bow-perch, duly secured by the leash. The owner was absent at
the time; and when he returned there was nothing left of poor Jones
other than the feet and a sad litter of pretty brown and white feathers
round about the bow-perch.
When your short-winged hawk has been taken up from hack, or at anyrate
when she is to be taken in hand, her trainer must set to work very
seriously and very promptly at the business of reclamation. This is
not, it is true, different at first in character from that required
for the long-winged hawks. But it is often different in degree; for
personal attention and almost perpetual care are a necessity. Unless
you can contrive to have her "waked," you will have a tough job with
her. Anyhow, she must be carried almost all day. Whether eyess or
wild-caught, she should be treated very much like a haggard peregrine.
Almost superhuman efforts will be required in some cases before she
can be manned; yet manned she must be, and that more thoroughly than a
long-winged hawk, before you can hope to do much with her. It required
a Sir John Sebright to kill a partridge with a sparrow-hawk ten days
after she was caught; and it would be still more difficult to kill a
blackbird in that time. That is, at least, to first kill it, and then
take up the hawk! For carrying is a vice to which the short-winged
are naturally disposed, though they are not so bad in this respect as
merlins or hobbies. In manning a short-winged hawk it will generally
be found better to work very hard for a few days than to work only
moderately hard for a much longer time. In fact, a less amount of
attention, if concentrated upon the pupil at first, will do more than a
much greater share applied to her in smaller doses.
It is not usual to hood sparrow-hawks much after the time when they
are being reclaimed. But they should be kept, like all other hawks,
accustomed to being hooded, and not by any means allowed to become
hood-shy. And while the business of reclamation lasts it is a good plan
to tie the tail. This is done by making a half-knot round the shaft
of the outer feather, nearly half-way down, passing the ends over and
under the tail, and making a double knot of them on the shaft of the
outer feather on the other side. When the hawk bathes the thread is
nearly sure to come off; and when she is dry you can put on another.
If it stays on, no harm is done. This simple device ensures the tail
feathers against any accident which might otherwise occur while she is
being handled by the trainer, and perhaps by more or less incompetent
assistants. Later on it will be tried hard enough! Some falconers--and
good ones, too--despair of saving it for long; but you need not
sacrifice it sooner than you have any real occasion. The tail is just
as much--or as little--use to the hawk while she is being manned--or,
for that matter, when she is flying to the fist--whether it is tied up
or not; and in the former state it can come to no harm. Let the hawk at
least take her first quarry with undamaged feathers. A moderate degree
of coping will be found permissible for short-winged hawks, although it
is hardly orthodox to say so. No doubt blunt claws would be detrimental
to these hawks in the field; but between bluntness and the needle-like
sharpness of the uncoped claw there is a world of difference. The
uncoped goshawk not only ruins the best glove in double-quick time, but
sometimes in starting from the fist does not completely disengage all
eight needles immediately from the buckskin, and so is impeded, and
flurried, and vexed in that short temper of her own.
The strength of a goshawk's beak and feet is almost incredible; and,
this being so, it is well to be provided with good store of useful
tirings. Heads and necks of fowls will be acceptable; and the more
elderly and bony these creatures are the better for the purpose. For
during the long process of carrying you will want to give your goshawk
plenty of hard morsels to pull at; and none but the toughest will
withstand for long the attacks of her sharp-pointed beak. The frequent
discussion of bony tirings will wear down that sharpness a little,
but I think not quite enough. Goshawks should not be allowed to get
at all thin, far less weak; on the other hand, they should not be too
freely fed. Half a crop a day of beef or good fowl, or a little more
of rabbit, is a very fair allowance, if she has once a week, or rather
oftener, a good gorge, with plenty of castings, and the next day very
short commons. As soon and as much as possible she must be made to
work for her food. That is, she must earn it by showing every day some
improvement in her behaviour. If yesterday she bated off twenty times
in ten minutes, you may call it an improvement to-day if she bates off
only ten times in the same space of time. So when she has walked even
two inches for her food, it is an improvement when she will walk four
or five. Step by step you must coax her to do more for you, rewarding
her the moment she has given way. And all the time you must be making
friends with her. Stroking with the stick or a feather is always to
be recommended. But you must be able also to stroke her with your
hand as you like without any remonstrance or fear on her part. It is
a troublesome job, do what you will, the manning of a short-winged
hawk. But the harder you work, and the more patience you can exhibit,
the better and quicker you will succeed. It is best to be content at
first if very slow progress is made. In the later stages, if you make
no mistake, there will be days of much quicker improvement, such as may
even sometimes surprise your too desponding mind. Thus though it may
be days before you can get her to exchange her walk to the fist for a
jump, yet this feat once accomplished, you may have quite a short time
to wait before she flies to you the length of the room. On the other
hand, a hawk which has come well to you indoors will perhaps not come
a foot, or even look at you, when first called off in the open air. Of
course for all the early out-door lessons the hawk will be secured by
a creance. It is well even to be a little extra-cautious in dispensing
with this safeguard, for if a goshawk when only half trained does once
make off, it is rather a chance if you ever come up with her again.
In time your goshawk will be manned, and at least partly reclaimed.
She will look gladly on you when you come near, and jump or fly to
you on small encouragement for a small reward. If you tease her with
a morsel of meat, she will perhaps make that quaint crowing sound
which sounds like a mild protest against your hard-heartedness. When
you hold out your fist temptingly with a nice piece of food in it,
she will fly fifty yards to you at once. If now you have carried her
sufficiently throughout the process of reclaiming, she will not need
much to bring her into "yarak"; that is, into a state of eagerness for
killing quarry. A small dose of purgative medicine may be given, and
after twelve hours' fast, a small feed of very good food, without any
castings, and on the next day she may be entered.
Female goshawks are now usually trained chiefly for hares or rabbits.
Males should always be tried first at partridges or pheasants; and
if they are not good enough for such quarry, may be degraded to
water-hens and the like. The bagged quarry for entering should, in the
one case, be a rabbit, and in the other, a partridge or house-pigeon.
When a rabbit is used, a short, tough cane may be attached crosswise
to the end of a very short creance, which will serve to prevent the
quarry from disappearing bodily down a burrow. The partridge or pigeon
should not, of course, be a first-rate flier; or, at least, he may have
a longer creance to carry. Let the hawk take her pleasure on the first
live quarry killed; and next day give a very light feed, not later
than noon. On the third day she may be flown either at a better bagged
quarry or at a wild one. She should have a very good start for her
first real flight, and in a country free from burrows or impenetrable
covert. Then, if she only starts, she ought to kill in the case of a
rabbit. Nothing is more bloodthirsty than a young goshawk in yarak;
nor, in proportion to its size, has so much strength in its grasp. When
once the four long daggers with which each of her feet is armed are
imbedded in the head or neck of a rabbit or leveret, it is generally
all up with that unlucky beast. He may jump and kick and roll over
in his frantic efforts to escape. He may by the latter tactics force
the hawk to let go for a time, though this is by no means always the
result even of a complete somersault. But if the grip is thrown off,
the respite is short. Before the quarry can make use of what wits are
left to him, the pursuer is on him again--this time probably with a
still firmer hold than before. Though a rabbit is fast for a quadruped,
and the goshawk slow for a hawk, yet the advantage in pace is always
with the latter; and though she may be thrown out again and again by
the doubles of the quarry, yet in an open space speed must tell, if the
pursuer is in condition.
Nevertheless, as it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to find
rabbits in open places, it is advisable to let the first flight for
your beginner be as easy as you can. When she has taken an undersized
rabbit or leveret, she may be advanced to a full-grown rabbit, and
thence, after a few kills, to a full-grown hare, if your ambition is
to fly hares. Very possibly it may be necessary to throw her off at
the quarry and not expect her to start of her own accord. She may also
refuse more than once, and yet be in the mind--that capricious and
wayward mind of hers--to fly. I have seen a young goshawk, only just
trained, taken out and thrown off at three or four hares in inviting
places, and have seen her refuse them all; and yet, ten minutes later,
I have seen her go at one like a whirlwind, and have it down and
helpless within sixty yards from the start. The flight at hares rather
overtaxes the powers of any except the strongest female goshawks; and
many people think that the flight at rabbits is preferable, even in
the quality of sport afforded. In fact, the difference between the two
is not so much one of speed as of brute strength; and in quickness the
rabbit will be found generally superior. A goshawk which will take
hares is the more valuable; but it is doubtful if she shows any better
sport. Gaiety Girl, whose portrait is given, changed hands at £20,
and was well worth the money. This hawk, trained by Mr. A. Newall on
Salisbury Plain, killed no less than fifty-five hares in one season,
besides other quarry. Of course if goshawks are to be flown at hares,
they must be left strictly to this quarry as far as possible, and not
encouraged to ever look at a rabbit.
The goshawk has one great advantage over her nobler cousin, the
peregrine; she need not necessarily stop when her quarry has gone into
covert. Provided only that the covert is thin enough for her to see the
quarry, and to get along, she will stick to him there as pertinaciously
as in the open. She will naturally not be so likely to succeed; trees
and bushes will impede her stoops, and give the quarry a far better
chance of doubling out of the way. But it is astonishing how clever
even an eyess goshawk can be in threading her way through covert,
and choosing the moment when a dash can be made. The hare is not as
well able to use her natural cunning in front of a hawk as in front
of a hound. The whole affair is so rapid, and the danger behind is so
pressing, that there is hardly time to devise, and still less to put in
practice, those tricks which are so successful in hare-hunting. If one
could only see it all, possibly the flight at a hare in a thin covert
would be better worth seeing than a flight in the open. At any rate,
the skill exhibited by the hawk must be greater. For she not only has
to keep the quarry in view, and to make straight shots at him, but also
in doing so to avoid breaking her wing tips, or even her neck, against
an intervening tree.
The wild rush of the falconer--or ostringer--and his friends after a
flight at a hare in covert is also a thing to be seen. It is unique
of its kind. In magpie-hawking there is a lot of hurrying up, much
tumbling about, much laughter, and any amount of shouting and noise;
but there is not the same necessity for headlong racing through the
thicket. If you want to be "in it" with a goshawk, you must go at a
break-neck speed over or through all obstacles; you must be able to
see through screens of interlacing boughs, and dash through almost
impervious places. You must cut off corners by instinct and follow
by inspiration. There is something in the impetuosity of a goshawk
which is contagious; and the ostringer, who has perhaps not marched at
the double for years farther than the length of a platform to catch
a train, may sometimes be seen tearing along with his very best leg
foremost, through bramble, thorn, and quagmire, in hope of being in
at the death. The whole sight is certainly worth seeing. Artists are
fond of depicting the goshawk as she stands with outspread wings and
half-open mouth with the hare paralysed in her terrible foot. No better
personification could, indeed, be found of the pride of victory. The
hare weighs commonly three times as much as his captor; yet the victor
hawk must not only vanquish the hare, but also hold him fast. It is
almost as if a strong man were expected to hold a wild zebra in his
clutches. But the strength of a goshawk's grasp, like that of the
eagle's, must be tested by experience to be properly understood.
The female goshawk, besides being flown at ground game, may be trained
to take many other quarry, both big and little. At pheasants she may be
expected to do good execution. Partridges will sometimes be captured
in fair flight when a good start is made. Herons may be caught before
they have gone any distance on the wing. Wild geese, wild duck, and
wild fowl of various kinds in the same way. Land and water rails are
available; and water-hens are perhaps the favourite objects of pursuit
by a hawk that is not quite first-rate. Stoats, weasels, and squirrels
may be taken; and the harmful, unnecessary rats will be picked up
almost as fast as they can be driven out. When ferrets are used there
is a danger that one of them, emerging from below, may be nailed
and finished off by his winged ally. In the old days goshawks were
generally assisted by spaniels; and it was pretty to see how eagerly
and cleverly the dogs backed up the chief actor in the play, while she
in turn trusted to them to drive the quarry in the right direction. The
conditions of modern game-preserving do not lend themselves much to the
use of spaniels; and perhaps they are not so often of service to the
gos, but they are frequently used. A good retriever is often useful,
especially if you are flying pheasants, and the hawk should always be
on the most amicable terms with him.
Male goshawks are thought by some to have more speed than their
sisters. When they are good, they will take partridges, with a good
start, but not otherwise; and many of them will tackle a pheasant. It
is said that in some countries quails are taken with the male. Very
strong males will sometimes hold a full-grown rabbit; but the effort
is rather beyond their strength. The flight of a gos is very peculiar.
After a few fast flaps of the wing she often spreads them a moment
or two, and sails along, giving to the falconer, who is accustomed
to long-winged hawks, the appearance of having left off. Almost
immediately, however, she begins moving her wings with greater vigour
than ever, and, gaining quickly this time on the quarry, comes at him,
sometimes with an upper-cut, if it is a bird, before you think she can
have had time to reach him.
Goshawks may be flown repeatedly the same day. In fact, it is almost
difficult to say when they have had enough flying. But in this, as
in all kinds of hawking, it is well to remember that an extra good
flight with success means an extra good reward. If, therefore, after
some indifferent or unsuccessful flights, the hawk has flown hard and
killed cleverly, I should advise feeding her up, and not flying her
again merely for the sake of making a bigger bag. Under this system she
may go on improving indefinitely; and you will be rewarded for your
pains and labour at the beginning by possessing a hawk which perhaps
for years will give a good account of herself. I have said that a
goshawk which is intended for hares should be kept to them alone. So,
likewise, a male which is meant for partridges should not be thrown
off at pheasants or anything else. But, as a general rule, there is
no such necessity with the short-winged hawks, as there is with the
long-winged, of keeping them from checking at odd quarry. The bag of
a goshawk has often been known to include four or five very different
items, such as a rabbit, a rat, a weasel, a pheasant, and a water-hen.
These sanguinary creatures are not particular as to what they kill when
they are in the humour for killing. They commit murder, as foxes do,
for the mere pleasure of it; and this you may easily prove if you put
out a number of fowls where a gos can get at them. If you keep one in
the same room where other hawks are, and by any mischance her leash
comes unfastened, she is as likely as not to go round and massacre the
whole lot.
Live fowls should never be given on any account to a goshawk. If you
can, you should prevent her from ever supposing that they are good
to eat, otherwise she may take a liking to poultry, and seize every
opportunity of helping herself to the hens and chickens of your
neighbours. The attraction of poultry-yards is a great objection in
places where there are many of them, and some very good falconers have
actually felt themselves obliged on this account to discontinue keeping
hawks.
I am indebted to Mr. John Riley, of Putley Court, Herefordshire, for
the following most interesting records of scores with trained goshawks,
and the notes which are annexed. They illustrate this department of
hawking in the most vivid and practical way:--
Enid (eyess female goshawk)--
In 1888-89, took 82 rabbits.
" 1889-90, " 59 rabbits, 1 pheasant, 1 water-hen.
" 1890-91, " 67 rabbits, 1 water-hen, 1 partridge,
1 stoat, 1 mole.
" 1891-92, " 52 rabbits, 1 mole.
Isolt (eyess female goshawk)--
In 1885-86, took 110 rabbits, 2 pheasants, 13 water-hens,
5 ducks, 1 rat.
" 1886-87, " 130 rabbits, 1 pheasant, 4 ducks, 3 water-hens,
1 stoat.
" 1887-88 (to 26th Dec.), took 70 rabbits.
Sir Tristram (eyess male goshawk)--
In 1886-87, took 26 partridges, 10 pheasants, 16 rabbits, 5 landrails,
12 water-hens, 1 stoat.
Geraint (eyess male goshawk)--
In 1888 (to 4th Oct.), took 11 partridges, 5 pheasants, 2 landrails.
Tostin (haggard male goshawk), caught 15th July, flown 9th September--
In 1891 (to 17th Oct.), killed 21 partridges, 3 pheasants, 1 landrail,
1 leveret, 1 wood-pigeon, 1 water-hen = Total, 28 in 38 successive
days.
[Illustration: TRAINED GOSHAWK "GAIETY GAL"
OWNED BY MR. A. NEWALL]
Mr. Riley trains his own hawks, and, for convenience and for saving
time in an enclosed country, has sometimes used a lure. He keeps them
as hard at work as he can. He has much difficulty in finding enough
quarry for them, and is much troubled by poultry. But for these causes
the bags made would have been even much larger than they were. He has
a great preference for haggards, whose style of flying he considers
very far superior to that of the eyesses. Tostin, especially, used to
shoot up some feet when he left the fist; and this seemed to have a
demoralising effect on the partridges. He hit them so hard that the
blow could be heard a long way off. When he was unsuccessful, instead
of coming straight back, he would throw up two or three hundred feet,
moving his head from side to side as he flew. Sometimes he would come
down upon partridges on the ground, so as to put them up all round him,
and then, if there was no friendly hedge at hand, he was pretty sure to
have one. It was no doubt a great feat to get him fully trained in so
short a time after his capture as fifty-six days. Pity his brilliant
career was so soon ended by death! Almost all the partridges taken,
by one hawk or the other, were captured in fair flight, without any
routing about in hedges or other covert.
To show what goshawks will do when well worked, I may mention that Mr.
St. Quintin's falconer (now the head falconer of the Old Hawking Club)
took out his female goshawk in November 1885, and gave her seventeen
chances at rabbits lying out in the grass. She caught them all, but
being a bit blown, let the last one go. Sir Henry Boynton's goshawk,
Red Queen, on 2nd December 1895, killed as many as twenty-four rabbits
in one day.
* * * * *
The illustration is a portrait of "Gaiety Gal," the goshawk which,
while she was owned by Mr. Arthur Newall and flown by him, killed in
one season fifty-five hares, nineteen rabbits, two pheasants, one
partridge, one wood-pigeon, one Norfolk plover, one landrail--total,
eighty head. This fine hawk was afterwards sold for £20; and the vendor
always considered that he had been a loser by the bargain.