Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get a Goshawk in England at any price. Two or three were caught annually by the Dutch falconers; but with these exceptions there was nothing to be got, unless an occasional wretched-looking scarecrow, imported in a cage by the Leadenhall dealers, with every feather broken. And yet the hawk is not uncommon on the Continent; but they have to be specially sent for, or they arrive spoilt, and good for nothing.
Believing the Goshawk to be the hawk of the future for England, I have devoted no little trouble to solving the problem of a supply; and I have solved it. In some of the large forests in France the nests are so abundant that I have seen seven (yielding twenty-two nestlings in one season) in a square mile. Moreover, I have long had an idea that even better supplies are to be obtained from the North. Accordingly, in 1876, Lord Lilford and myself sent to Norway in the autumn to explore the haunts of the raptorial birds, in which exploration we met with complete success. In about ten days the three men (one of my falconers and two Norwegians) caught twenty-seven "passage" (i.e., wild-caught) hawks—fourteen Goshawks, eleven Norwegian Gerfalcons, and two Rough-legged Buzzards. These Goshawks were nearly as large again as the French birds, besides being certainly faster, though preying almost exclusively on Ptarmigan. Ornithologists may be interested to learn that the only other hawks met with in Norway by my people were the Merlin and the Hobby (in October!). Another unfailing source of supply is Latakia, in Syria.
These wild-caught Goshawks are infinitely better and easier to manage than nestlings, which require constant attention, and go out of training so quickly as to try the temper of a beginner most terribly. It is nestlings that have earned for the Goshawk a character for sulkiness and laziness which has deterred many falconers from making use of it. A "passage" Goshawk, as a rule, is devoid of these bad qualities.
Merlins are getting gradually scarcer. They are absolutely harmless; yet the gamekeepers wage deadly war against them, and, nesting as they do on the ground, they are only too easily killed. Thirteen nests were thus cruelly and wantonly destroyed last summer in a small island off the west coast of Scotland. I do what little I can by purchasing all the young ones the keepers send me, whether I want them or not, as this encourages them to
