[349] Qūsh-i tavār. The female of the goshawk used to be dignified by the title “falcon”: vide also page 25, note [107].
[350] The females of all species of hawks and falcons are, I think, faster and better-winded than the males, though the latter are probably more adroit.
[351] Tūīt̤ug͟hlī T. is explained by the author in more than one marginal note as being the mīsh-murg͟h or “sheep-bird:” tuit̤uglī, ta,īt̤uglī, dūīdāg͟h and t̤ūī are other forms of the word. (Persians that are not sportsmen often call the Egyptian or White Scavenger Vulture mīsh-murg͟h.)
[352] T̤arlān u qizil.
[353] ʿAsr, the time between noon and sunset.
[354] A hawk in just proper condition, if underfed, will, if the night be very cold, become thin in one night. In the Indian Spring, when the nights are temperate, I have known a saker falcon go up two ounces in weight in one night, from a slight overfeed of hubara flesh.
[355] A good Indian falconer would carry his hawk after dark till she had “put over” completely, first allowing her an hour’s rest or more. “Carrying,” with its constant shifting of position, not only causes a hawk to “put over” quicker, but induces it to digest and empty the bowel: on the fist she will “mute” thrice for every twice on the perch. After a hard day’s work, water should be offered her at night, especially if she has been fed on the rich flesh of the hubara: after a feed on hubara flesh, I have known some sakers drink two or three times between nightfall and midnight. If a hawk has been fed late and is to be flown early next day, it should be taken on the fist before sunrise (a lamp being lit in the room) and “carried,” the hawk being made to change its position frequently: this induces it to “cast” earlier than it would otherwise do. When hubara-hawking all day long in the desert for ten or fifteen days at a stretch, my falconers would carry the hawks from 3 or 4 a.m. till daybreak, and the hawks (peregrines or sakers) would be ready to fly by 8 a.m. (A hawk “puts over” when it takes down any portion of the meat from its crop into its stomach). “Putting over” quickly is the sign of a good digestion.
[356] Ṣarf kardan is properly “to eat,” but by it the author evidently means either to “put over,” or “to digest,” I do not know which. Qūsh gūsht-ash mī-shikanad P. and ʿat̤īn āpārir T. are the ordinary expressions for “the hawk is ‘putting over’.”
[357] T̤uʿma andāk͟htan, “to cast,” i.e., to throw up the casting in the morning. Vide page 82, note [332].
[358] It must be recollected that the quarry is the chukor partridge which is usually found in the hills, and five flights might represent a lot of work. With the grey partridge of India five flights would be nothing for a good goshawk.