The Goshawk (3 page)

The hawk was on the highest rafter, out of reach, looking down with his head on one side and a faint suggestion of Lars Porsena. Humanity could not get there.

Fortunately my human manœuvres disturbed the creature, shook him off the high perch to which he was entitled by nature and unused by practice — unused by the practice which had stormed at him with mechanical noises and shaken him with industrial jolts and bent his tail feathers into a parody of a Woolworth mop.

He flew, stupid with too many experiences, off the perch at which he would have been impregnable. There was sorrow in the inapt evasion. A goshawk, too gigantic for a British species, and only three inches shorter than the golden eagle, was not meant to run away but to run after. The result was that now in this confinement of unknown brick walls, he fled gauchely, round and about the dreary room: until he was caught after a few circuits by the jesses, and I stood, stupefied at such temerity, with the monster on my fist.

The yellowish breast-feathers — Naples Yellow — were streaked downward with long, arrow-shaped hackles of Burnt Umber: his talons, like scimitars, clutched the leather glove on which he stood with a convulsive grip: for an instant he stared upon me with a mad, marigold or dandelion eye, all his plumage flat to the body and his head crouched like a snake's in fear or hatred, then bated wildly from the fist.

Bated. They still said that Jones minor got into a bate that morning, at preparatory schools. It was a word that had been used since falcons were first flown in England, since England was first a country therefore. It meant the headlong dive of rage and terror, by which a leashed hawk leaps from the fist in a wild bid for freedom, and hangs upside down by his jesses in a flurry of pinions like a chicken being decapitated, revolving, struggling, in danger of damaging his primaries.

It was the falconer's duty to lift the hawk back to the fist with his other hand in gentleness and patience, only to have him bate again, once, twice, twenty, fifty times, all night — in the shadowy, midnight barn, by the light of the second-hand paraffin lamp.

It was two years ago.
[1]
I had never trained a serious hawk before, nor met a living falconer, nor seen a hawk that had been trained. I had three books. One of them was by Gilbert Blaine, the second was a half-volume in the Badminton Library and the third was Bert's
Treatise of Hawks and Hawking
, which had been printed in 1619. From these I had a theoretical idea, and a very out-of-date idea, of the way to man a hawk.

In teaching a hawk it was useless to bludgeon the creature into submission. The raptors had no tradition of masochism, and the more one menaced or tortured them, the more they menaced in return. Wild and intransigent, it was yet necessary to ‘break' them somehow or other, before they could be tamed and taught. Any cruelty, being immediately resented, was worse than useless, because the bird would never bend or break to it. He possessed the last inviolable sanctuary of death. The mishandled raptor chose to die.

So the old hawk-masters had invented a means of taming them which offered no visible cruelty, and whose secret cruelty had to be born by the trainer as well as by the bird. They kept the bird awake. Not by nudging it, or by any mechanical means, but by walking about with their pupil on the fist and staying awake themselves. The hawk was ‘watched', was deprived of sleep by a sleepless man, day and night, for a space of two, three or as much as nine nights together. It was only the stupid teachers who could go as far as nine nights: the genius could do with two, and the average man with three. All the time he treated his captive with more than every courtesy, more than every kindness and consideration. The captive did not know that it was being kept awake by an act of will, but only that it was awake, and in the end, becoming too sleepy to mind what happened, it would droop its head and wings and go to sleep on the fist. It would say: ‘I am so tired that I will accept this curious perch, repose my trust in this curious creature, anything so I may rest.'

This was what I was now setting out to do. I was to stay awake if necessary for three days and nights, during which, I hoped, the tyrant would learn to stop his bating and to accept my hand as a perch, would consent to eat there and would become a little accustomed to the strange life of human beings.

In this there was much interest and joy — the joy of the discoverer — much to think about, and very much to observe. It meant walking round and round in the lamplight, constantly lifting back the sufferer, with a gentle hand under his breast, after the hundredth bate: it meant humming to oneself un-tunefully, talking to the hawk, stroking his talons with a feather when he did consent to stay on the glove: it meant reciting Shakespeare to keep awake, and thinking with pride and happiness about the hawk's tradition.

Falconry was perhaps the oldest sport persisting in the world. There was a bas-relief of a Babylonian with a hawk on his fist in Khorsabad, which dated from 3000 years ago. Many people were not able to understand why this was pleasant, but it was. I thought it was right that I should now be happy to continue as one of a long line. The unconscious of the race was a medium in which one's own unconscious microscopically swam, and not only in that of the living race but of all the races which had gone before. The Assyrian had begotten children. I grasped that ancestor's bony hand, in which all the knuckles were as well defined as the nutty calf of his bas-relief leg, across the centuries.

Hawks were the nobility of the air, ruled by the eagle. They were the only creatures for which man had troubled to legislate. We still passed laws which preserved certain birds or made certain ways of taking them illegal, but we never troubled to lay down rules for the birds themselves. We did not say that a pheasant must only belong to a civil servant or a partridge to an inspector-of-filling-up-forms. But in the old days, when to understand the manage of a falcon was the criterion by which a gentleman could be recognized — and in those days a gentleman was a defined term, so that to be proclaimed ‘noe gent.' by a college of arms was equivalent to being proclaimed no airman by the Royal Aero Club or no motorist by the licensing authorities—the
Boke of St. Albans
had laid down precisely the classes of people to whom any proper-minded member of the Falconidae might belong. An eagle for an emperor, a peregrine for an earl: the list had defined itself meticulously downward to the kestrel, and he, as a crowning insult, was allowed to belong to a mere knave — because he was useless to be trained. Well, a goshawk was the proper servant for a yeoman, and I was well content with that.

There were two kinds of these raptors, the long- and the short-winged hawks. Long-winged hawks, whose first primary feather was on the whole the longest, were the ‘falcons', who were attended by falconers. Short-winged hawks, whose fourth primary was the longest, were the true ‘hawks', who were attended by austringers. Falcons flew high and stooped upon their quarry: hawks flew low, and slew by stealth. Gos was a chieftain among the latter.

But it was his own personality that gave more pleasure than his lineage. He had a way of looking. Cats can watch a mousehole cruelly, dogs can be seen to watch their masters with love, a mouse watched Robert Burns with fear. Gos watched intently. It was an alert, concentrated, piercing look. My duty at present was not to return it. Hawks are sensitive to the eye and do not like to be regarded. It is their prerogative to regard. The tact of the austringer in this matter was now delightful to me. It was necessary to stand still or to walk gently in the mellow light of the barn, staring straight in front. The attitude was to be conciliatory, yielding, patient, but certain of a firm objective. One was to stand, looking past the hawk into the shadows, making minute and cautious movements, with every faculty on the stretch. There was a rabbit's head in the glove, split in order to show the brains. With this I was to stroke the talons, the chest, the entering edge of the wings. If it annoyed him in one way I must desist immediately, even before he was annoyed: if in another, so that he would peck at what annoyed him, I must continue. Slowly, endlessly, love-givingly, persistently, it was my business to distinguish the annoyances: to stroke and tease the talons, to recite, to make the kindest remonstrances, to flirtingly whistle.

After an hour or two of this, I began to bethink myself. He had already begun to calm down, and would sit on the glove without much bating. But he had suffered a long and terrible journey, so that perhaps it would be better not to ‘watch' him (keep him awake) this first night. Perhaps I would let him recuperate a little, free him in the barn, and only come to him at intervals.

It was when I went to him at five minutes past three in the morning, that he stepped voluntary to the fist. Hitherto he had been found in inaccessible places, perched on the highest rafter or flying away from perch to perch. Now, smoothing up to him with stretched hand and imperceptible feet, I was rewarded with a triumph. Gos, with confident but partly disdainful gesture, stepped to the out-feeling glove. He began, not only to peck the rabbit, but distantly to feed.

It was at ten past four that we encountered next, and already there was a stirring of the dawn. A just-lighterness of the sky, noticed at once on stepping from the kitchen fire, a coldness in the air and humidity underfoot, told that that God who indifferently administers justice had again ordained the miracle. I stepped from the cottage fire to the future air, up earlier even than the birds, and went to my grand captive in his beamed barn. The brighter light shone on his primaries, a steely lustre, and at ten to five the glow in the small two-shilling lamp was vanquished. Outside, in greyness and dim twilight, the very first birds not sang but moved on their perches. An angler who had been sleepless went past in the half mist to tempt the carp of the lake. He stopped outside the lattice, looked in upon us, but was urged to take his way. Gos bore him fairly well.

He was eating now, pettishly, on the fist, and Rome was not built in a day. Rome was the city in which Tarquin ravished Lucrece; and Gos was Roman as well as Teutonic. He was a Tarquin of the meat he tore, and now the man who owned him decided that he had learned enough. He had met a strange fisherman through the dawning window: he had learned to bite at rabbits' legs, though mincingly: and when he was hungrier he would be more humble.

I came away through the deep dew to make myself a cup of tea: then rapturously, from six until half past nine in the morning, I went to sleep.

At ten o'clock on the next day the hawk had not seen humanity for four hours, although he was sharper set. He had probably also been asleep during that time (unless the daylight and uncertainty would have kept him awake), so that, although he was hungry, he was partly liberated from the imposition of a human personality. He would no longer step to the glove, as he had done since three o'clock, but again fled from rafter to rafter as if he were just out of the basket. It was a set-back in the process of success, and it caused a scene.

A hawk was held by a pair of jesses, one on each leg, which were united at the ends remote from the leg by means of a swivel through which the leash could be passed.

One of Gos's jesses being worn out at the swivel hole, it had been impossible to pass the leash (a leather boot lace in my case) through its proper swivel. I could not attach the swivel. For that matter, I still lacked a swivel. So the two jesses had been tied together, and then knotted to a piece of string for leash. Why the leash had not then been tied to a perch, thus preventing his escape, I am not able to remember. Probably I had no perch, and anyway I was in the position of having to discover all these things by practice. It has never been easy to learn life from books.

The upshot was that now, loping away from his tormentor on silent wings, the bird caught his leash on a nail and hung head downward in rage and terror. It was in this mood that we were to begin his first full day, and the curious result of it was that immediately he had been secured he began to eat ravenously, standing square and easy, until he had consumed a whole leg. He was always more amenable after a good fuss, as I found later.

A boy for whom I had once kept two sparrow-hawks, arrived at half after twelve. It had been possible during the still hours to make a careful inventory of the hawk's plumage, and the results were not satisfactory. The tips of all the primary wing feathers were snapped off for about an eighth of an inch, and the whole tail had been skewed sideways by his struggles in the basket, until it was not possible to distinguish any details in the horrid tangle. The way to straighten out the tail feathers was to dip them into almost boiling water for half a minute. It was necessary to decide whether this ought to be done now or later. If now, and if with a clumsy and acrimonious scene, it would mar those first amicable impressions which were said to be so important in every walk of life. If later, and also with a scene, it might undo whole weeks of training. I took the bold step and put the saucepan on the fire. I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, I thought, and so I would introduce the boy to the hawk at the same time. He would be useful in the subsequent operation.