All big hawks captured after they have begun to prey for themselves are now commonly called passage hawks, although the name, strictly speaking, may not be at all correct. Wild-caught is a more inclusive term; and it is often used in the case of sparrow-hawks, merlins, and hobbies, when casually caught by bird-catchers or gamekeepers, and not killed in the process. We have seen that passage hawk means properly a hawk caught during the period of her first migration southwards. It is, however, of course, possible to capture her either in early autumn before the migration has commenced--in which case a peregrine is more properly called a slight falcon or slight tiercel--or late in the winter, when she has become a lantiner, or in the spring migration, when she is travelling north. But if she has begun to moult before she comes into man's possession, she is correctly described as a haggard. If gamekeepers were a little more alive to their own interests they would often catch sparrow-hawks, and sometimes merlins and peregrines, alive, and dispose of them at a very remunerative price, instead of killing them, often in a most barbarous way, by means of pole-traps and other snares, which destroy or cripple them after hours of torture, and render them almost valueless. But for generations past no systematic attempts have been made in this country to snare wild hawks in an uninjured condition; and if a falconer should be able to obtain any hawk so taken he may consider himself exceptionally lucky. Several such hawks have indeed been caught in England, and, getting rather accidentally into good hands, have turned out very excellent performers. Occasionally a sparrow-hawk or merlin is saved alive out of the nets of a bird-catcher; and these, if heard of before their plumage is ruined, are prizes for which many a falconer will gladly give something like their weight in silver.