CHAPTER XVI
THE SHUNQĀR OR JERFALCON
Shunqār or Jerfalcon.—The Jerfalcon[151] is a species known to me only by description. During the whole of my sporting career, I have neither come across it myself, nor known a falconer to whom it was more than a name.
Specimen brought from Russia.—In the year of the Flight 1284[152] a strange falcon which I take to be a Shunqār was bought in Russia for a great price, and presented as a curiosity to His Lofty and Imperial Highness, the Shāh of Shāhs, the Shadow of God. Out of the plenitude of his bounty and the immensity of his condescension, His Most Noble and Exalted Majesty delivered it into the humble keeping of his servant [i.e., the author], decreeing that it should be trained to the flight of the Common Crane. The Royal Gift was accepted by this slave, with due tokens of humility: he kissed the falcon’s jesses and then placed it on his obedient head:—
I stood before the King as might a slave;
The Royal hand to me the falcon gave.
I placed it on my head in fashion meet
When I’d imprinted kisses on its feet.
Scanning the bird with a falconer’s eye, I saw that three flight-feathers of each wing were old and unshed. It was evident it had been taken up while still in the moult, so I had it replaced in the mew[153] and fed on fresh birds, with frequent changes of diet. Three months later it was taken up clean moulted, not a single old feather remaining.
As it may interest falconers, I append a description of this particular falcon.
Description.—In size it was about half as large again as a fine female Saker Falcon.[154] The plumage of the back and head was a brown ash colour, and each feather of the back and tail was marked with two tiny white spots. From the back of the neck to the rump, the plumage was ash-coloured, and covered with small yellowish-white spots. The breast was white, each breast feather being tipped with one small black spot and margined with black marks interlacing each other like the links of a chain. The tarsi[155] were robust and short; the feet small in proportion to its size, but stout and powerful; the claws and beak black; the iris dark, and the thighs[156] as thick as those of a male eagle.[157] The wing in length was something betwixt that of the long-winged and short-winged hawks, longer than that of a qizil or t̤arlān, and shorter than that of a shāhīn or a saker. The tail was broad and full of spots and markings. Like the Qara-qūsh-i ā,īna-lī,[158] it had a few stiff white feathers in the back, whether a mark of the species or merely a sign of old age, I am unable to say. (White feathers do occasionally make their appearance in aged sakers.) In weight it equalled nearly three sakers.[159] From my experience of hawks I should say that, when it reached me, it was in its tenth or twelfth moult. What its immature plumage may have been like, I cannot even guess.