[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.