[626] The author’s meaning is not at all clear. He appears to contradict himself. There is probably a copyist’s error somewhere.
[627] Duzd, lit. “thief.”
[628] Sakers leave India in February, i.e., much earlier than Peregrines, and the migrating instinct seems to be more powerful. When the Spring stirs in their blood and the migration restlessness is on them, they will sometimes when unhooded look up skywards, and call. One sign of their becoming mast is bobbing before rousing. Possibly, too, sakers nest earlier than other falcons.
[629] “Intermewed,” i.e., moulted in captivity.
[630] That is the heat of Spring.
[631] Baray-i yadagī u iḥtiyāt̤.
[632] A good saker flown at kite in cantonments will single out and stick to one bird, even when the air is black with kites. Indian falconers generally select a young female kite at which to unhood the hawk. Whether, if the hawk were unhooded at an old bird, she would not be tempted to abandon it for the feebler flight of a young one, is a question.
CHAPTER XXXIX
ON MANAGEMENT DURING THE MOULT
Now let me say a few words concerning the management of hawks in the moult. The more hawks of any kind are flown at quarry and the better they are protected from the severity of heat and cold, the better and quicker will they moult. Hawks moult cleaner and quicker in the hot regions of Persia than in the cold.[635] Further you must pay the greatest attention to the flesh you give them, not feeding them on one kind of meat only, for if you do, they will certainly fall sick.
Now if you wish to moult your hawks in a hot region, such as Baghdad, you must construct out of split-cane a “mew” of a size proportionate to the number of your hawks, building it on the river bank where the Shimāl[636] wind can constantly be felt. In front of this house or room, enclose an open space with a wall.[637] Inside the room, construct at a distance of forty inches from the wall, as many hollow mud platforms as you have hawks.[638] Fill in the top of the platforms with sand and fine gravel, and spread the floor of the room also to the depth of a span with sand and gravel. On the platforms intended for short-winged hawks, spread leaves of willow, or wild mint, fresh and green, or any other kind of greenery, so that the hawks may lie down and rest on it. Next, in front of each platform, construct in the ground a small bathing tank lined with red clay. Every morning early, you must sprinkle the inside of the mew with water, and every evening as soon as the sun has set, you must take out your hawks, short-winged and long-winged, and “weather”[639] them in the open-air enclosure that is in front of their room. In the outside enclosure, too, there must be, dug out of the ground, small tanks, which should be lined with clay. Doubtless you are saying to yourself, “Why can’t I substitute a copper or an earthen basin?” Now, were you to substitute a copper or an earthen basin, there would be a danger that while splashing about in the water, the moulting hawk might strike the half-grown wing- or tail-quills that are full of blood against the hard substance of the basin, and that the injury might cause the blood to dry up in the quills, which would thereby become “strangled,” and would eventually drop out. Now with a tank of beaten clay and sand there is no such danger. In short, every hawk in this outside enclosure also, must have its own bathing-pool.