[501] Bālābān-i ṣaḥrā,ī.
[502] The author means by open flight, for the hubara frequently escapes by doubling and hiding. It will squat on a perfectly open plain, the pursuing hawk alighting within five or six feet of it utterly puzzled as to what has become of its quarry. On the ground, an hubara does not at first seem afraid of a single saker or peregrine.
[503] Agar hubara jilav-i ū shikast va buland shud.
[504] Lābud hubara rā dar jilo andāk͟hta ʿaqab mī-kunad.
[505] Sakers are passionately fond of the hubara as a quarry: they will never relinquish a chase as long as there is any chance of success: they will fly the hubara even when they are not very hungry. The hubara, when put up with a hawk just behind it, flies faster than is commonly supposed, especially in the Spring when it is fat and in high condition. A passage saker intended for this quarry should not, I think, weigh less than 2 lbs. 4 oz. and should have been brought into hard condition by being exercised twice daily at the lure; twenty-five stoops at each exercise are sufficient. A wild saker seldom exceeds 2 lbs. 8 oz. in weight. A haggard of the editor’s that weighed when caught 2 lbs. 9½ oz., when killing hubara weighed 2 lbs. 6½ oz. (For kite 2 lbs. 3 oz. will be found a sufficient, and generally a suitable weight. For hare a weight of 2 lbs. is sufficient. Beginners should note these weights and so spare themselves much disappointment.)
[506] Only passage sakers are, in India, flown at hubara. They are usually flown out of the hood, but in districts full of ravines they are trained to “wait on.” The author, like most natives of India also, seems to think that hubara can be killed only on the ground. As already mentioned in the above note, to fly houbara successfully sakers must be in high condition, i.e., they must be kept well exercised and well fed, a simple fact that most Eastern falconers forget. I have seen Arab falconers stuffing their newly caught sakers with suet and skin. In Arabia Deserta by C. M. Doughty we read, “The Gate Arabs had robbed more than a dozen young falcons.... Their diet was small desert vermin, lizards, rats, insects ... on finding naught they maintain them with a little dough; in the nomad life they pluck for them those monstrous bluish blood-sucker ticks which cleave to the breasts of their camels.” The translator once gave a school-boy a trained lagaṛ: when pocket-money and meat failed, the boy fed it on boiled rice. Even after this treatment it flew and killed a wild raven.
[507] Wild hawks seldom if ever kill on the ground. They stoop at the hubara, knock it about and put it up. Many trained hawks even will not, when in high condition, bind to an hubara on the ground but stoop at it till the falconer flushes the quarry.
[508] Burrāq shuda. Burrāq is the long-haired “Persian” cat; gurba is the general term for a cat.
[509] Chalqūz or chalg͟hūz; excrement of birds only. “Mutes,” the technical term for the droppings of hawks. When the hubara is feeding on certain juicy crops, its excrement is thin and glutinous and has an offensive odour. Though the excrement is ejected through fear, it is a very effective weapon. A hawk that is smeared, is unable to fly properly, possibly because the wind strikes cold through the damp feathers. Some of the best hubara hawks, peregrines and sakers, always bind to the wing, and so escape being buffeted or befouled.
[510] Agar dast-i ustād-i k͟hūb bāshad dūr nīst dast-raw biyandāzī dar havā bi-gīrad.