So long as easy crane like this I see.”
Another remedy for a crane hawk that has turned tail is to fly her several times with[571] a made hawk, giving the latter a goodish start. When the “cast” has taken one or two cranes in this manner, reverse the process, that is, cast off, first the hawk that turned tail and then a little later the made hawk.
A shāhīn differs from other falcons.[572] Don’t fancy you can give her ten flights in a day without spoiling her. If you work her like this, she will become stale and will be spoilt. One to three flights with a shāhīn are permissible; more are unlawful.[573]
Good Hawking Districts.—Possibly you are wondering to yourself what district will produce for your shāhīn all this varied quarry. Let me tell you that there is first Sulaymāniyah in Kurdistān;[574] next, the province of Bag͟hdād, which has within a radius of two or three farsak͟h all the quarry you want; and lastly, the district of Shīrāz. These are the only three places I have ever come across in my life where all quarry suitable for a shāhīn is to be found.[575]
“Waiting on.”—For “waiting-on” flights, the peregrine[576] or the passage shahin[577] is better than the eyess shahin.[578] If you train your shāhīn[579] to “wait on” she will never take large quarry such as wild goose, common crane, ruddy shieldrake, common heron, etc.; but she will, however, show you excellent sport with small quarry. The beauty of the shāhīn lies in this, that when you gallop on to large quarry, unhooding her at it, she is off your fist like a bullet, to seize it. That his hawk should take unusual quarry that she does not kill in her wild state is the pride of a falconer, and it is in this he exhibits his skill. Pigeons, plover, duck and so on are, in a hawk’s wild state, her natural prey; these she takes without the falconer’s teaching.
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.