FOOTNOTES:
[537] Mīk͟hak (vide chap. LVI), i.e., bruised and swollen soles from stooping at the hard head of the antelope. A hawk may get swollen feet from a variety of causes.
[538] Narra āhū-yi shāk͟h-dār.
[539] Vide note [179], page 42 regarding the confusion of the term shāhīn.
[540] Dast-par va būlī.
[541] Siyāh-chashm, “the black-eyed.”
[542] Shāhīn-i yūrī. Yūrī or yawrī, E. Turkish, is the young of any animal; but I think only before it has begun to fend for itself.
[543] Orientals do not fly hawks at “hack.” “‘Hack.’—A state of liberty in which young eyesses are kept for some weeks to enable them to gain power of wing.”—Lascelles.
[544] In Teheran about 15th September. In Baghdad about two days later.
[545] The hood used in Persia and in the regions around Baṣrah and Bag͟hdād is quite unlike the Indian hood. It is, in fact, little else than a bag of soft leather with two straps at the back to tighten it. It is nearly the same pattern as one depicted in Falconry in the British Isles.
[546] Bad-kulāh, “hood-shy.” I have heard of sakers being cured of “hood-shyness,” but real hood-shyness is, I believe, a vice impossible to cure. Let a hawk sit barefaced during the moult for six months, and two days after she is taken up she will be as “hood-shy” as ever. A hawk is “hood-shy” that has, owing to bad handling, conceived a terror or hatred for the hood, and “bates” when it is shown to her.
[547] Ṣafrā, lit. “bile” (one of the four humours of the body).
[548] Hawks quickly learn to associate any particular and peculiar sound with food.
[549] Dast-kash, in modern Persian “a glove,” is in India “an assistant falconer,” or one who “strokes with the hand.”
[550] Eastern falconers use the voice freely in training hawks. The luring cry throughout the East seems to be coo coo. The translator remembers more than one old-fashioned Panjabī falconer who prided himself on his “coo.”
[551] Kabūtar-i chāhī, lit. “well-pigeon”: blue rocks in certain districts inhabit and breed in old wells.
[552] Chug͟hd or bāya-qūsh, the species already mentioned in Chapter VIII as inhabiting ruins and being useful for a preliminary flight for a shāhīn that is to be entered to stone-plover. Panjabī falconers call the spotted owlet (Athene Brama) chug͟hd. This species is not uncommon in Persia, being often found in holes in garden walls. The flight is feeble and slow, and it is easily taken by any hawk. The flesh is palatable to hawks.
[553] Chāk͟hrūq, T. Lane, in a note to Chapter xx, Vol. III, of his incomparable translation of the Arabian Nights, says that the stone-plover or karawān is a favourite cage-bird with the Turks and Egyptians.
[554] Pas dawr-i chāk͟hrūq bi-gīr tā bi-k͟hwābad: the author’s meaning is not clear.
[555] Dastī, adj.
[556] Hūbara or āhūbara, Per.; and ḥubārạ, Ar.
[557] Murg͟hābī-yi sar-sabz, P.; murg͟hābī-yi shil bāsh, P.T.; shil, for T. yeshil, “green.”
[558] Qāz.
[559] Ḥuqār (for ʿuqār); vide page 136, note [580].
[560] Pilla pilla bālā mī-ravad: pilla (m. c.) is the rung of a ladder, a step, etc.
[561] Dast-par.
[562] Kulāg͟h-i quzqūn.
[563] Du si durnā-yi nazdīk-i ārām va amīn. Durnā, P., or t̤urnā, T., is the common crane; also called kulank or kulang—the “coolan” of Anglo-Indians.
[564] The common crane has a very sharp claw, which it uses in defence. Even if the falconer make in at once, the hawk may suffer a permanent injury before he arrives to her assistance.
[565] Dila va past-fit̤rat, “ignoble”: dila, apparently here the diminutive of dil, “of small heart.”
[566] “Haggards” will often unbind to avoid the concussion on striking the ground and then rebind. The translator had a haggard saker trained to kite, which never failed to unbind; he cannot, however, recollect a case of a young passage hawk, peregrine or saker, unbinding either from heron or kite. The Persian author is here writing either of the eyess or of the young shāhīn, captured some time before September.
[567] Chug͟hd or bāya-qūsh.
[568] Bī-jān-tar va kūchak-tar va maflūk-tar.
[569] In Europe the heron was justly considered a difficult quarry. Its powers of flight, however, have been greatly over-rated. A heron, even “on the passage,”[570] is an easy flight to a good passage hawk. But hawks, at any rate after the first flight or two, fly at this quarry with great deliberation, and stoop at it with some caution, for the heron when high up makes half-hearted dabs with its beak at the hawk. An experienced hawk generally knocks about the heron by stooping several times at the shoulder or point of the wing. I have known a “haggard” break the heron’s wing by a stoop. Some hawks bind to the heron’s feet sticking out behind, and so drag it down close to earth, out of range of its beak; they then close, on the ground.
[570] “On the passage,” i.e., on its regular flight to or from its feeding ground.
[571]Bā-ham janāḥ andāk͟htan.
[572] Siyāh-chashm, “black-eyed.”
[573] Ḥarām, “prohibited; that which is unlawful.”
[574] Kurdistān, in Turkey in Asia, N.E. of Mesopotamia.
[575] The black ibis, a favourite quarry in India for the peregrine, is not found in Persia, Baghdad, etc. Gulls are found in the vicinity of Shiraz, notably in the open ground round the “Tak͟ht-i Jamshīd” or Persepolis.
[576] Baḥrī.
[577] Shāhīn-i t̤ūrī, lit. a netted shahin: t̤ūrī for tūrī.
[578] Shāhīn-i āshiyānī.
[579] By “shāhīn” here the author presumably refers to the eyess.
CHAPTER XXXVII
TRAINING THE PASSAGE SAKER TO COMMON HERON[580]
To train the bālābān to heron, she must first be trained, as already described, to a lure[581] made of the wings of a common crane.
When she knows the lure well, get a live chicken and tie it by the leg to the lure, with a string about twenty inches long. Lure the hawk from a long distance, casting into the air, two or three times, the lure garnished with the chicken, so that the hawk may come with force and eagerness and seize the chicken. Cut the chicken’s throat and feed up the hawk. Let her kill two or three fowls in this manner, so that she may come with eagerness to the lure.
Now go out into the open country and find a night-heron,[582] get close to it and cast off your hawk at it. * * *.[583]
If you find a night-heron on the edge of a small stream, cast off your hawk, and should she take it, feed her up.[584] If, however, she will not fly it, you must take one with a shahin or with a goshawk and in the morning give it to her alive as a flying train: if she will not take it, bind a little meat on its back. Fly her at this same “train” again in the evening. When she will readily take the “train,” you must fly her at one or two wild night-herons and at one or two purple herons. * * *.[585]
Now procure a bagged common heron[586] and on its broad yār māliq[587] feathers tie a piece of meat very firmly so that there is no possible chance of your hawk being able to disengage it and go off with it. Hold the heron by one wing, and get your assistant to stand some distance off with the hawk. When the bālābān binds to the meat, let her pull and eat a little: then remove her. You must now seel the heron’s eyes so that it may not suddenly ring up[588]—better still, bind two or three of its flight-feathers together so that it may run on the ground and extend its wings.[589] As soon as the hawk takes the train feed her up.
On the morrow, again tie meat on to the heron’s back, but unbind the flight-feathers so that it may fly well. Release the heron, and when it has flown ten or twelve paces unhood and cast off your hawk. As soon as she takes it, give her only a little meat and fly her again in the evening in the same way. Do this for several days, gradually reducing the quantity of meat on the heron’s back.[590] As soon as your hawk flies the heron in style, seizing it by the neck without regarding the meat, cut the heron’s throat and feed her up.[591] Next day procure a fresh heron but tie no meat on its back. Let it fly, and when it has flown a good distance unhood and cast off your hawk. When she takes the heron, feed her up. Withdraw the dead heron from her grasp and cast it to a distance of ten or twelve yards that she may know that that is her dead quarry;[592] then let her go and settle on it and take two or three beakfuls. Again withdraw and cast the dead heron to a little distance, but do not let the hawk go: let her “bate” towards it once or twice and then hood her. Wash off any blood spots and clean the “nares”.[593]
Now procure another heron, one strong of flight, that will ring up. Get an assistant to mount some high place—a place about a hundred ell high[594]—and release the heron. You must be mounted, and, hawk on fist, take stand below this spot. Remove the hood of the hawk and let her discover the heron above her. She will have to exert herself to get above it, and if, after getting above it, she makes two or three stoops at it[595] before binding, what better? Feed her up.
Next day, go and find a wild heron in an easy and suitable spot, but have with you as a “make-hawk”[596] a bālābān that is fully trained to this flight. First cast off your young hawk. She will, of course, make four or five stoops at the heron, but should the heron commence to “ring” and the hawk show signs of slackening, then at once cast off the “make-hawk,” so that the jealousy of the young hawk may be excited and they may together take the quarry. Feed up the young hawk well, so that you may give her washed meat[597] the day following.
As long as your hawk, while ringing up with the heron, keeps beating[598] her wings quickly, it is a sign that she is trying to get above it; but the moment she ceases to beat, and begins to sail,[599] she has given up. In this case, at once call her down to the lure of crane’s wings, and as soon as she comes reward her by killing, under the lure, either a chicken or a pigeon, feeding her up well; for in the opinion of falconers this dropping from a height to the lure is better than taking ten herons: she is now your property; up till now she has been merely a loan.
Next day[600] go and find a heron in an easy place, and first cast off your young hawk at it. As soon as she has made one or two stoops, cast off the “make-hawk” (before the heron commences to ring) so that they may stoop at it alternately and the two may take it together.
On the following day feed her lightly;[601] and on the day following that, again fly her at a heron. If she is in her proper condition[602] and not too fat, and is also hungry, it is impossible for her to fail, even if the heron ring up into the Seventh Heaven[603]—unless, of course, an eagle interferes or the heron drops into a broad stream that cannot be crossed. Should either of these mishaps occur, lure her without delay, and feed her well. In the latter case, you may consider she has taken this heron: it is as though she had done so. On the morrow, please God, she will not fail.
If your hawk has had a hard flight after a heron, she should be fed up on it, and not flown a second time that day. If, however, she kills very quickly and without exertion, there is no harm in giving her a second flight.
If you want your saker to fly heron well, you should keep her for this flight alone and not fly her at anything else.
A young passage saker in the first or immature plumage,[604] is far better for this flight than the “intermewed” hawk,[605] for, after the moult, a hawk becomes heavy, and cannot ring up after a heron. For one or two moults a hawk will indeed kill heron in a sort of fashion,[606] but after three or four moults she is useless for this flight;[607] you must procure a young bālābān[608] for it.