FOOTNOTES:
[283] Dalīja or dalīcha.
[284] Dalīja-yi nāk͟hūn-siyāh, the (“Black-clawed”) Common Kestril: dalīja-yi nāk͟hūn safīd, the (“White-clawed”) Lesser Kestril. “Although the two species (the Common Kestril and the Lesser Kestril) are so closely allied, there can be no difficulty in discriminating the eggs, and we found that the Arab boys knew the difference between the two species at once, calling one the black-nailed and the other the white-nailed ‘bashîk’.”—Rev. H. B. Tristram’s Ornithology of Palestine; Ibis, 1859.
[285] Sār; I believe this is the common starling.
[286] Bushire is nearly the centre of the coast line of the warm desert tract of Fars.
[287] Vide Chapter XV.
[288] Wild ravens in India not only chase house-pigeons but will enter a dove-cot and kill them.
[289] For the use of a peregrine as a decoy vide Badminton Library volume, page 264.
[290] The best bait for a kestril is a mole-cricket.
[291] Wild peregrines and sakers will occasionally kill and eat kestrils and shikras. Trained hawks will also do so. Under a lagar’s eyrie, in a cliff, I have found the feathers of quite a number of kestrils. Major C. H. Fisher, in his Reminiscences of a Falconer (page 59), mentions that he once took a sparrow-hawk with a trained falcon.
[292] Presumably the birds would “crab,” and the eyess being tame would not let go on the approach of the falconer. More than once, had I had a butterfly net, I could have placed it over a wild peregrine that was engrossed in a fight on the ground with a trained hawk.
[293] Sār, “buzzard.”
[294] Of the Eastern Red-Legged Falcon (Erythropus vespertinus of Jerdon, and E. amurensis of Blanford), Jerdon writes:—“Although the adult male in its mode of colouration resembles the kestrils, especially the lesser kestril, yet the colours of the young bird and female approach more to that of the Hobbies....”
“Fellowes says that it is very common in Asia Minor, building its nests under the roofs and sometimes even in the interior of houses.”
Jerdon also says that the claws are “fleshy.”
Dresser, in the Birds of Europe, writes:—“In many Turkish villages (as, for instance, Turbali) the place swarms with these hawks (F. Cenchris: Lesser Kestril).... Its eggs are placed without any nest under the eaves on the clay walls of houses and stables....”
[295] In Kirman, Persia, in the beginning of April, 1902, a flock of Lesser Kestrils roosted for some days in the trees in the Consulate garden.
[296] Two hostile tribes that live in the Syrian desert. They are noted for their breed of horses.
[297] “Hard-penned,” i.e., hard-feathered.
[298] “... When the pups [greyhound] are three or four months old, their education commences. The boys drive out of their holes the jerboa or the rat called “boualal” and set the pups at them. The latter by degrees get excited, dash after them at full speed, bark furiously at their holes, and only give up the pursuit to begin another. At the age of five or six months they are assigned a prey more difficult to catch—the hare....”—The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert, by E. Daumas. “McMaster says of its agility [the Indian Jerboa-rat or Kangaroo-rat—Gerbillus indicus]: ‘I have seen them when released from a trap baffle and elude dogs in the most extraordinary manner by wonderful jumps made over the backs, and apparently into the very teeth of their pursuers’.”—Mammalia of India; Sterndale.
[299] Chark͟h-shinās, adj.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SHRIKE
Amongst the “black-eyed” birds of prey must be classed a small sparrow-like bird, grey and black in colouring. In the Kurdish language it is called bāzūrī, and in Persian ālā güzkina.[300] In size it is somewhat larger than a sparrow: the wings are dark: the eyes have a dark line of antimony:[301] the claws and beak are black, sharp, and powerful. When trained, it kills with ease sparrows and the small tisks[302] found in the wheat and barley, in Spring. It also comes well to the lure from a distance.
There are two species. One grey and black with the antimony line under the eyes, and one yellowish. The former is decidedly the better.[303]