The Shāhīn OF Jabal Shammar.—Although the shahin from the mountains of Shammar is small, the female not exceeding in size the male of the other two species, still it is swift, bold, and easily entered to quarry, small or great. One eyrie, known by the name Jarāza, is especially famous; eyesses obtained from it are better and bolder than all others.
VIII
YOUNG PEREGRINE (INDIAN HOOD)
Though the passage shahin has more pace and a better wind than the eyess, it is far less tractable, for it has preyed for itself in the jungle, and is filled with overweening pride of its powers of flight. Say you have, with infinite pains, succeeded in training one to large quarry, and have unhooded her at a common crane or a heron, and that suddenly, beneath her, she spies a wild duck, or a pigeon, or some other small quarry. What does she do? She “checks,” forsaking the large quarry for the small, and fills you with bitter disappointment. Now an eyess shahin will not act in this scurvy manner.
Supposing a passage falcon, shahin or peregrine, comes into your possession and you have no choice but to enter her to large quarry, you should blind her in the left eye, for when her right eye is on the quarry she has no spare eye to cast elsewhere, and her whole attention is necessarily occupied with the quarry at which she has been unhooded. This is in accordance with the saying of the poet:—
“My left eye I will darken to the light,[185]
So that I view thee only with my right.”
I have successfully made the experiment and speak from experience.
Should you, however, wish to keep her for small quarry, on no account blind her. For small quarry you will find her better than the eyess: she will ring up better, especially after Royston Crows[186] and those blackguardly yāplāq owls.[187]
As remarked previously, the passage shahin and the peregrine are one and the same, with this difference, that the peregrine is stronger and larger. The courage of the peregrine, too, is greater than that of the passage shahin.