Training Greyhound Pup by means of the Common Kestril.—The Arabs of ʿUnayza and Shammar,[296] as I have myself witnessed, rear the nestling of the Common Kestril, and when it is “hard-penned,”[297] lure it with a lump of meat. As soon as it will somewhat come to this lure, they catch an antelope-rat or jerboa-rat, tie a cord to its leg, and fly the kestril at it. They next tie a long cord of ten or twelve ells in length to a rat’s leg, and then fly the kestril at it from a distance. After that they break one leg of a jerboa, and let it go in front of a two months’ old greyhound pup, and then cast off the kestril at it. The rat is taken after a few stoops. Next a jerboa is loosed in front of two greyhound pups three or four months old.[298] The pups start in pursuit, and the kestril is then cast off. At one time the pups make a dash, at another the kestril makes a stoop, till at last the rat is taken.
After killing a few rats with broken legs, a sound rat is released, a fine stick, four fingers’ breadth in length, having previously been passed cross-ways through the ears. This stick hinders the rat from taking refuge in a hole, for of course two-months-old pups cannot, unaided, overtake and kill a kangaroo-rat in the open country. Well, the rat is let go, and the kestril and the pups give chase. It is exactly like hawking gazelle with a chark͟h. After about thirty or forty stoops and dashes, the rat is taken.
The whole object of this play is to teach the pups, while growing up, to recognize the chark͟h;[299] so that should a hawk be flown at a herd of even a thousand gazelle, the hounds will chase none but the one at which the hawk is stooping. In puppyhood the hound has learnt that without the assistance of the kestril it cannot overtake an antelope-rat, and hence it has learnt to watch the hawk; and gradually it becomes so knowing, that instead of at once starting in pursuit of the gazelle-herd when it is slipped, it will fix its gaze skywards, and wait on the movements of the chark͟h.
FOOTNOTES:
[283] Dalīja or dalīcha.
[284] Dalīja-yi nāk͟hūn-siyāh, the (“Black-clawed”) Common Kestril: dalīja-yi nāk͟hūn safīd, the (“White-clawed”) Lesser Kestril. “Although the two species (the Common Kestril and the Lesser Kestril) are so closely allied, there can be no difficulty in discriminating the eggs, and we found that the Arab boys knew the difference between the two species at once, calling one the black-nailed and the other the white-nailed ‘bashîk’.”—Rev. H. B. Tristram’s Ornithology of Palestine; Ibis, 1859.
[285] Sār; I believe this is the common starling.
[286] Bushire is nearly the centre of the coast line of the warm desert tract of Fars.
[287] Vide Chapter XV.
[288] Wild ravens in India not only chase house-pigeons but will enter a dove-cot and kill them.