FOOTNOTES:
[148] Vide chapter XXV, page 69 for method of training for fowling purposes. I heard of the raven being thus trained and used as a “lure” for charg͟hs, in Baghdad, Baṣrah, and Muhammara.
[149] Dashtistān of Fārs; a warm region fringing the west of the Persian Gulf: Bushire is nearly the centre of its coast line.
[150] Kirmānshāh is a district about 250 miles north of Baṣrah (Bussora): its capital is said to be locally called Kirmānshāhān.
[151] Shunqār. In old Persian MSS. on falconry, this disputed name is undoubtedly applied to a Jerfalcon, a species of which is said to exist in Northern Asia. The following is a footnote from Falconry in the British Isles:—
“We have been informed by travellers that some few large white falcons, which must be Greenland falcons, are caught annually on their passing over the Caspian Sea and that they are highly prized by the falconers of Syria and Persia.”
The late Sirdar Sher ʿAli Khan, the exiled Wālī of Kandahar, told the translator that he kept shunqārs in Afghanistan, and that he once had one that was pure white. Jerdon, quoting Pallas, states that it is the Baschkir Tartar name of the Jerfalcon. Also in Courteille’s Dictionnaire Turk-Oriental we find:—“Shūnqār, faucon, proprement le gerfaut.” Dr. Scully, however, in his Turki vocabulary of birds states that shunqār is the name of Falco Hendersoni, and ītālgū of its female. If the coloured illustration of F. Hendersoni (supposed by its describer to be identical with the shunqār) that was published in the account of the Government Mission to Yarkand be a correct representation of the original, then no falconer, however experienced, can discriminate between F. Hendersoni and many old charg͟hs (F. Cherrug or F. Sacer) caught annually in the Panjab. Further, the Turks of Persia call the charg͟h Ītālgū, Aitalgu, etc.
[152] A.D. 1867.
[153] Qūsh-k͟hāna.
[154] The average length of some living specimens of the female immature saker measured by the translator was 22 inches. The average weight of young passage sakers, caught in the Panjab in October, is 2 lbs. 5 oz. Haggards very seldom exceed 2 lbs. 10 oz. An exceptionally fine charg͟h in the translator’s possession in 1892 weighed, when in flying condition, 2 lbs. 13½ oz.; while a second bird received in April, 1897, weighed 3 lbs. when fattened up for the moult. Both these last were young passage hawks. All weights were taken with the crop and stomach empty.
[155] Sāq, vide note [138] on page 33.
[156] Rān.
[157] Qara-qūsh.
[158] Vide page 31.
[159] An unconscious exaggeration on the author’s part. A mounted falconer, who will carry for six or seven hours at a stretch, without complaint, a hawk that weighs 2½ lbs., will tire at the end of an hour if this weight is exceeded by half a pound or even less. At such moments it is difficult to avoid forming an exaggerated estimate of the burden.
[160] “‘Mew;’ the place where hawks are set down to moult.... Mew, v. to moult, from the Fr. muer, to change the feathers.”—Harting.
[161] Vide Chapter on training the newly caught “passage” Saker Falcon. Neither English nor Indian falconers attempt to make hawks recognize their names. As, however, hawks are naturally very intelligent and can easily be trained to come to any distinct call, there would probably be no great difficulty in the matter. The idea seems novel.
[162] “‘Creance,’ s., Fr. créance, Lat. credentia, a long line attached to the swivel, and used when ‘calling off’; flying a hawk as it were on credit....”—Harting.
[163] For a straight short flight, Oriental falconers are generally agreed that the Sparrow-Hawk is one of “the swiftest birds that fly.”
[164] Māhūr, prop. “up and down land” (whether sand hills or hard ground).
[165] Qum is about eighty miles south of Teheran.
[166] Pul-i Dallāk or “Barber’s Bridge” is N.E. of and close to Qum: it spans the Qara-sū or Qara-chay.
[167] A.D. 1868.
[168] “A hawk is said to be ‘summed’ or ‘full summed’ when, after moulting, she has got all her new feathers and is fit to be taken out of the mew.”—Harting.
[169] Shimrānāt, a name given to the summer-quarters in the hills, near Teheran.
[170] K͟hār is a plain in ʿIrāq-i ʿAjamī, some thirty miles east of Teheran and separated from Varamīn by hills.
[171] “‘Haggard,’ a hawk that has been caught after assuming its adult plumage, that is, after having moulted in a wild state.”—Harting.
[172] Jarda. I believe this is the purple heron.
[173] Under “the compaynys of beeftys and Fowlys” in the Boke of St. Albans we learn that it is correct to speak of “an Herde of Cranys” or of “swannys” but a “Gagle of Gees” or of “women.”
[174] “‘Bind,’ to fasten to the quarry in the air.”—Harting.
[175] It is, of course, not the habit of wild hawks to kill more than one bird at a time. Major C. H. Fisher, commenting on this fact, writes (p. 140): “Nevertheless I have seen it done more than once by a wild falcon, and many times by my own trained birds—in the case of the wild falcon from having at her first stoop struck down her prey too close to a man; from over-keenness, I think, by the tame hawk.”
[176] In this quality of shooting up and preparing for a second stoop the Saker excels the Peregrine. The stoop, however, of the Saker is not as quick and sudden as the Peregrine’s.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SHĀHĪN[179]
This species is very widely distributed. It is divided into three varieties—namely, the dark, the light and the yellow.
VII
INTERMEWED PEREGRINE
The best shāhīns are procured from three districts: from Urūm[180] in Ottoman territory, from Ardabīl[181] in Persia, and from the hills of Shammar[182] in Arabia on the road to the holy city of Mecca.
The Urūm shahin is particularly common in Sīvās,[183] which place may be described as the “mine” of this variety. My private opinion, however, is that this, the shahin of Urūm, is not a shahin at all, but the young of the Peregrine; i.e., when snared it is a “peregrine,” when taken from the nest a “shahin.” My reason for forming this opinion is that I happened one Spring to be in Sīvās and called on the Governor. At my request he gave me a guide, who conducted me to a spot about two farsak͟h from the city, where there was a shahin’s eyrie in the hill-side. I sat down to observe it. My patience was soon rewarded by the appearance of the parent birds, bringing food for their young. I observed the birds closely, and discovered that they were not shahins but peregrines. This strengthened my previous supposition that confusion existed between the nestling and the passage hawk of the same species.
On another occasion I met a shikārchī[184] in Sīvās, with a peregrine on his fist. “What have you there,” I asked, “and what does it kill?” His reply was, “This is a shahin, which I took myself from the nest, and which I have trained to take eagles.” I accompanied him to his house, where he showed me ten or fifteen live eagles with clipped wings, which he kept loose near the house. It appeared that they had all been taken with the falcon then on his fist. I was seized with a desire to possess her, and offered him a large price; but he declined to part with his treasure.
The Shāhīn OF Jabal Shammar.—Although the shahin from the mountains of Shammar is small, the female not exceeding in size the male of the other two species, still it is swift, bold, and easily entered to quarry, small or great. One eyrie, known by the name Jarāza, is especially famous; eyesses obtained from it are better and bolder than all others.
VIII
YOUNG PEREGRINE (INDIAN HOOD)
Though the passage shahin has more pace and a better wind than the eyess, it is far less tractable, for it has preyed for itself in the jungle, and is filled with overweening pride of its powers of flight. Say you have, with infinite pains, succeeded in training one to large quarry, and have unhooded her at a common crane or a heron, and that suddenly, beneath her, she spies a wild duck, or a pigeon, or some other small quarry. What does she do? She “checks,” forsaking the large quarry for the small, and fills you with bitter disappointment. Now an eyess shahin will not act in this scurvy manner.
Supposing a passage falcon, shahin or peregrine, comes into your possession and you have no choice but to enter her to large quarry, you should blind her in the left eye, for when her right eye is on the quarry she has no spare eye to cast elsewhere, and her whole attention is necessarily occupied with the quarry at which she has been unhooded. This is in accordance with the saying of the poet:—
“My left eye I will darken to the light,[185]
So that I view thee only with my right.”
I have successfully made the experiment and speak from experience.
Should you, however, wish to keep her for small quarry, on no account blind her. For small quarry you will find her better than the eyess: she will ring up better, especially after Royston Crows[186] and those blackguardly yāplāq owls.[187]
As remarked previously, the passage shahin and the peregrine are one and the same, with this difference, that the peregrine is stronger and larger. The courage of the peregrine, too, is greater than that of the passage shahin.
Rūmalī[188] eyess shahins are bolder than all others—especially the dark variety.