Chapter XX The Eyess Saker Falcon
The eyess chark͟h229 is of four kinds. First there is the variety that in the Spring230 months breeds in the hills of Persia and Turkey.231
Another is found in Nejd232 in Turkish territory, where it lays its eggs on the bare ground, like the black-breasted sand-grouse,233 and the houbara bustard. This variety is called chark͟h-i māniʿī.234
Another kind nests in the hills and dry water-courses of Nejd. From thence nestlings are obtained by the Arabs who style them Ḥijāzī.235
All these kinds, if obtained from the nest, are chark͟h, and if snared after they have left the nest are lafīf.
The chark͟h-i māniʿī is exceptionally good, whether for gazelle, or common crane, or golden eagle: you can train it to anything. I am able to state that it is faster even than the shāhīn, for I have often flown one at crane in company with a shāhīn, and it has reached and “bound” to the crane a long way ahead of it.236
The colouration of the māniʿī varies, but that variety that has very red markings on the back, like a kestril,237 is the best. Of all the chark͟hs of the world the māniʿī with red spots on the back is the best. Although it is an eyess (chark͟h) and is obtained from the nest, it is equal to any noble passage falcon (bālābān) of the ḥurr ṣāfī race. It is to be obtained only from the Arabs of Unayza.238 In that waterless part of ʿArabistān its chief prey is houbara and hare.239
Footnotes
223 Fārsī and Aḥmar Shāmī.
224 The common crane is, in the air, an easier quarry than the heron. The struggle on the ground is, however, severe and highly dangerous, as the crane uses its sharp claw with great effect.
226 Some Indian and Persian falconers I questioned in Baghdad had never met with a falcon that answered this description. The Lagaṛ falcon (F. Jugger) of India—a desert falcon—does not answer to the description. Also it does not appear to be found in Persia or Asia Minor.
227 Kulāg͟h-i kūchak u ablaq, presumably “the hooded crow,” common around Baghdad and in Persia. The author probably styles it “small” as compared to the raven, which is sometimes called by the same name. Vide page 46, note 186.
228 Durrāj, “the francolin.”
229 Chark͟h is the eyess saker, and bālābān the passage saker.
230 There are four distinct seasons of the year, in Persia. The Spring, unlike the Indian Spring, is long and cool. The Saker falcon migrates from the Panjab much earlier than the peregrine.
231 i.e., Turkish territory.
232 Nejd, in central Arabia, directly west of Baḥrayn Island.
233 Bāqir-qara T. and Siyāh-sīnah P.: both words signify literally “black breast.” The Arab gentleman mentioned in note 215, page 54, informed me that in certain localities the saker nests on the bare ground. Vide also page 115, note 491. An Englishman told me that he once, in Wales, found two peregrine’s eggs laid on the bare open ground close to a cliff edge.
234 Has māniʿī here the signification of “difficult of access”?
235 Ḥijāz, a province on the Red Sea. It is not in Nejd.
236 This is no sure test of swiftness, for a peregrine flown with a large and powerful saker often flies “cunning.” Vide note 178, page 42.
237 I have known a saker that in the immature plumage was white and covered with spots (such a saker is styled in the Kapurthala State chītal charg͟h and is there considered useless for anything except hare) assume this red kestril-like plumage on its first moult.
238 Unayza, name of a tribe and of a place in West Nejd. The tribe is famous for a breed of horses, larger and coarser than the Nejd breed. The name is said to be the diminutive of either anza, a “she-goat” or of anaza, a “javelin.”
239 All sakers in a wild state occasionally prey on houbara. Trained haggards, but not young passage hawks, will as a rule take hare without being entered by a “train.” Perhaps during the nesting season, the parent birds are driven to killing hare. I have seen a young passage hawk of mine, flying close to the ground, carry a hare for two or three hundred yards. The hare, a fine hill specimen, weighed 4½ lbs., while the saker weighed only 2 lbs. 4 oz. I have seen an “intermewed” saker stoop at, and strike, a large hare on the head, with such force that the hare never moved again. In Dresser’s Birds of Europe it is stated on the authority of Colonel Przevalsky that in Mongolia, in Winter, the chief food of the saker is the Alpine hare.