The green plover is such a common bird, and so easily found in open ground, that it is a pity, in one sense, that he cannot be flown. The unlearned may ask, Why not? The answer is, Because no hawk is good enough to take him. By which I do not mean that no peewit is ever taken by a peregrine. The wild peregrines take them not unfrequently; and trained ones have now and then succeeded in cutting one down. But the attempt to make trained hawks take them regularly, or even fly them for any length of time, has always failed. John Barr, amongst others, trained some picked tiercels specially for this quarry. When I saw him some time after he had made this experiment, he assured me that to kill peewits with trained hawks was impossible. Of course plovers of all kinds are not more exempt than other creatures from the ills that flesh is heir to. In fact, to judge from the tone of their cry, and considering the way they have of sitting in wet feet without changing their stockings, it may be supposed that they are often out of sorts. Sometimes, doubtless, like other birds, they are infirm and old. When labouring under any such disadvantage, even if it be only rheumatism or a cold in the head, a chance peewit may be cut off and reckoned in the hawk's score. Otherwise these birds are too clever for even the best trained hawks. I have seen even bagged peewits make such a complete fool of a falcon that she was ashamed of herself. They did not exactly "fly round" the hawk, as the saying is, but they did almost as much. They made rings underneath her as she was ringing up, keeping in exactly that position where she could never get her head towards them at all. Then if the hawk did manage to put in a stoop they would face about so as to avoid the shot, and, with a great flop of one wing, start away like phantoms in an unexpected direction. If the hawk contrived to get at them from behind, they would take a sort of header downwards, and, making a kind of somersault in the air, come up behind the hawk with a manifest smile on their usually daft countenances. On the downs in Wilts and Berks you will sometimes see a rook-hawk, or, for that matter, a game-hawk, when coming back from an unsuccessful flight, make a dash at a lapwing as he flounders about below. But the creature generally shifts from the stoop with almost contemptuous ease. Only in rare cases is he too slow. Mr. E. C. Pinckney once took a lapwing with a very young eyess tiercel; that is, the hawk put him in after a good flight, and he was picked up. But I do not think that tiercel ever took another. There is therefore a chance for anyone who wants to beat the record in the matter of plover-hawking. With two very first-rate passage tiercels, or perhaps, better still, two shaheens, the attempt might be made again. Whoever succeeded would thereby have carved for himself a prominent niche in the falconer's temple of fame.