The signal is given, and in the twinkling of an eye the hood is removed from one of the hawks and it is set free. The falconer points to the fleeing heron, the impatient hawk shakes its pinions, utters a cry, and quick as lightning soars aloft. The affrighted heron tries in vain to rise higher than his pursuer, but the latter directs its flight in such a manner as to be constantly hovering above its quarry. Each attempt of the heron meets with a counter-move on the part of the hawk, compelling its victim to descend. If the heron shows signs of returning to the starting-point where the hunters are, the hawk, swift as a flash, bars its progress in that direction and forces it to take the opposite one; it keeps worrying the other bird, tiring it and practically dazzling it by the repeated beating of its pinions, until it finally brings it back to the point within an easy view of the spectators of the struggle. The heron at length determines upon resistance. Steadily pursuing its course, and apparently motionless, it presents its long bill, sharp like a sword, to its foe. The hawk, on its part, decides upon attack. Rapidly wheeling round and round the heron, it lowers its flight, then re-ascends and all at once grips the flanks of its victim. Then begins a veritable struggle at close quarters, with all its fury and all its rapidly changing incidents. The heron has the first advantage; it aims a terrible stroke at its adversary, piercing it between the neck and one of its pinions as if with a dagger. The hawk, nevertheless, clings to the heron and rends the latter’s flesh with its beak. The heron quickly follows up its strokes; compelled to fight and at the same time to carry the weight of its foe, it multiplies its attack without getting rid of its assailant, and the blood of both stains their plumage crimson. In spite of this, the hawk looks like getting the worse of it. There is a longer interval between its attacks, which are neither as fierce nor as sure as heretofore, and the victory bids fair to remain with the heron, when the falconer despatches a second hawk from among those which, though hooded up to now, seem aware of the struggle going on, to judge by the flapping of their wings and the sudden stiffening of their feathers. The freshly-despatched combatant is a hen-bird, easily recognised by its beautiful brown plumage, for it is noteworthy that among this species the females are bigger, stronger, and bolder than the males. No sooner is the hood removed than the female rises into the air and, disdaining all preliminary evolutions, fastens its beak into the neck of the heron. The air is rent by the cries of the hunters, the barking of the dogs, and the braying of the horns. The heron’s resistance is, from that moment, useless. The new assailant virtually smothers it, and, moreover, digs its claws into the heron’s back, while the male, its strength revived by the timely aid of the female, renews its attacks.