[68] “And we shall say that hawkys doon draw When they bere tymbering to their nestes.”—Boke of St. Albans. [“To timber,” in old English, is “to build a nest.”]
[69] Parhā-yi ḥalāl, lit. “lawful feathers.” There is a belief that until the quills of the tail and wings are produced a bird is not ‘lawful’ for food.
[70] “To seel,” is to sew up the eyes: a thread is passed through the centre of each lower eye-lid, near its edge; the two threads are then knotted together on the top of the head, being drawn so tight that the lower eye-lids cover and close the eyes. Wild birds so treated sit quite still and do not injure themselves.
CHAPTER IV
THE PĪQŪ[72] SPARROW-HAWK
The Pīqū (Shikra).—The next hawk to be described is the Pīqū. There are two varieties. The first, or tawny variety, has the markings on the breast large and distinct. The second, or dark variety, has a reddish tinge running through the darker colour of its plumage.
These hawks arrive in the country about the beginning of September, some twenty days before the advent of the Sparrow-hawks.
Inferiority of Eyess Pīqū.—Unlike the Sparrow-hawk, the eyess of the Pīqū is much inferior to the passage-hawk; the eyess, from its craven spirit, being with difficulty entered to quarry. For this reason it is little esteemed. The eyess of the Sparrow-hawk, on the contrary, surpasses the passage-hawk.
Of the two varieties, the tawny is the better, surpassing, as it does, the Sparrow-hawk in appearance, more especially so after the first or second moult.
The dark variety, however, is sulky and runaway.
Though slower on the wing than the Sparrow-hawk, the tawny variety can take with success any quarry that the former can. In fact, from a working point of view, there is little to choose between them. The Pīqū is, however, by far the hardier of the two, enduring with indifference the extremes of heat and cold. Flown in the hot weather from morning till night, it shows no signs of distress, but rather seems to get brisker and brisker after each successive flight: it is impervious to fatigue. It is certainly quite ten times hardier than the Sparrow-hawk.