FOOTNOTES:
[273] Layl, “The Hobby.”
[274] A hobby is too cowardly to be caught by a common quail as a bait. I have frequently tried and failed, but on substituting a sparrow have succeeded instantly. Lieut.-Colonel E. Delmé Radcliffe in his pamphlet on Falconry states that the European Hobby is sometimes trained in India and flown at the Hoopoe and the male at the Diongo-Shrike or “King-crow.” I have, however, never met with any Panjabī falconer who had heard of one being trained with success.
[275] For Shamīrānāt, vide note [169], page 40. Mazenderan is a province on the south coast of the Caspian.
[276] In the desert, the bag͟hs or “gardens” are the only places where there are tall trees.
[277] The hobby is not trained in the Panjab. In Albin’s Natural History of Birds (pub. 1738) it is stated that “The Fowlers, to catch these Hawks, take a Lark and having blinded her and fastened Lime-twigs to her legs, let her fly where they see the Hobby is, which striking at the Lark is entangled with the Lime-twigs.”
XII
HOBBY WITH SEELED EYES
XIII
HOBBY WITH SEELED EYES
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SANGAK[278]
This “falcon” closely resembles the Indian Sparrow-Hawk,[279] but the young bird is smaller and darker in colouration. Also it has not the dark stripe under the chin.[280] The only difference between the two is that the Sangak is black-eyed while the Pīqū is yellow-eyed.[281]
In the jungle it preys chiefly on locusts and frogs, but occasionally kills a small wounded or diseased bird. It haunts “gardens,” and, like the hobby, nests in trees. However, it is a bird impotent and unvalued, except for its tail, which can be used for “imping”[282] that of a pīqū.
The “intermewed” bird and the nestling are identical in plumage, and cannot be distinguished from each other.