Goshawks like wagtails[194] all should be,
And Sparrow-hawks like Goshawks all;
But Shāhīns round and Charg͟hs tall.[195]
Should Baḥrīs too from faults be free,
In truth broad-shouldered they must be.
FOOTNOTES:
[189] i.e., the colour of the skin of an almond. The yellow variety of peregrine is avoided by Panjab falconers.
[190] The only Englishman who attempted gazelle hawking in India was the late Sir Harry Lumsden who raised the Corps of Guides. He told the translator that the Amir used to send him from Kabul, at the beginning of the cold weather, trained hawks and greyhounds, as well as falconers. In an article in the Badminton Magazine on Sir Harry Lumsden’s gazelle hawks, there is an illustration of a peregrine striking at a gazelle. This is an error. Sir Harry used only charg͟hs for gazelle.
[191] Delicate compared to the saker, the falcon most prized by Orientals. In Baghdad (in 1900-01) the price of a peregrine had risen from three to ten rupees, whereas a saker was said to be worth as much as seventy rupees. In the Panjab, sakers range from Rs. 3 to Rs. 7. The Saker is, by most Easterns, preferred to the Peregrine, as it is hardier and can, to a certain extent, be fed on butcher’s meat, and still work well; whereas it is impossible to keep a peregrine in first-class condition without a constant supply of doves and pigeons, or birds whose flesh is equally good. Further, in the desert, the crops are scanty, and in consequence the houbara cannot always be marked down in their feeding grounds, but have to be laboriously beaten for by a long line of mounted men in open order; even a young saker will sit barefaced on the rider’s fist without bating, but keeping a sharp look out for the quarry, which, by running round the line or dodging through the intervals, may escape the keen sight of the beaters, but not the keener sight of the falcon.
[192] Hence the epithet yäwā applied to it and to the shahin, in the Kapurthala State.