[154] The average length of some living specimens of the female immature saker measured by the translator was 22 inches. The average weight of young passage sakers, caught in the Panjab in October, is 2 lbs. 5 oz. Haggards very seldom exceed 2 lbs. 10 oz. An exceptionally fine charg͟h in the translator’s possession in 1892 weighed, when in flying condition, 2 lbs. 13½ oz.; while a second bird received in April, 1897, weighed 3 lbs. when fattened up for the moult. Both these last were young passage hawks. All weights were taken with the crop and stomach empty.
[155] Sāq, vide note [138] on page 33.
[156] Rān.
[157] Qara-qūsh.
[158] Vide page 31.
[159] An unconscious exaggeration on the author’s part. A mounted falconer, who will carry for six or seven hours at a stretch, without complaint, a hawk that weighs 2½ lbs., will tire at the end of an hour if this weight is exceeded by half a pound or even less. At such moments it is difficult to avoid forming an exaggerated estimate of the burden.
[160] “‘Mew;’ the place where hawks are set down to moult.... Mew, v. to moult, from the Fr. muer, to change the feathers.”—Harting.
[161] Vide Chapter on training the newly caught “passage” Saker Falcon. Neither English nor Indian falconers attempt to make hawks recognize their names. As, however, hawks are naturally very intelligent and can easily be trained to come to any distinct call, there would probably be no great difficulty in the matter. The idea seems novel.
[162] “‘Creance,’ s., Fr. créance, Lat. credentia, a long line attached to the swivel, and used when ‘calling off’; flying a hawk as it were on credit....”—Harting.
[163] For a straight short flight, Oriental falconers are generally agreed that the Sparrow-Hawk is one of “the swiftest birds that fly.”