Chapter XXV The Kestril283
There are two species of kestril. One species is yellowish in colouration and is covered with very pretty spots and markings; the other is yellowish but without markings, whilst its claws are small and white.
The first species, the “black-clawed” kestril,284 kills in a wild state, sparrows, quails, starlings285 and such small quarry, but as it is ill-tempered and slow of flight, falconers care little for it. It, however, serves several purposes.
First: In Bushire and the desert tract of Fārs286 it is caught and trained as the Raven is trained by the Arabs.287 A raven is caught and so trained to “wait” on, that it will circle above the head for half an hour. A fine cord about forty inches long is fastened to its legs having at the end a bunch of feathers the size of a sparrow. Thus prepared it is cast off to “wait on.” From a distance it has the appearance of some bird of prey attempting to seize a small bird, and this, arousing jealousy, attracts bālābāns and other birds of prey from a distance. Then, on the arrival of, say, a bālābān with the other birds, the raven settles, when the fowler lets fly a pigeon in front of the bālābān. The latter fancies this is the quarry the raven was chasing.288 The moment it seizes the pigeon it is snared. Bālābāns are also caught with kestrils trained in this manner.289
Second: If you want to take passage sakers with an eyess saker (chark͟h), catch one or two kestrils in a du-gaza or sparrow-hawk net,290 “seel” their eyes and fly them as “trains.” Next fly your eyess291 at a wild bālābān: it will certainly not fail to take it.292
For an eyess saker that is being trained to take eagles and sakers, kestrils and buzzards293 are necessary “trains.”
When giving a buzzard as a “train” the hind claw must be firmly bound back to the shank. Also for the first three or four times meat must be tied to its back before it is shown to and released for the eyess. When the young hawk takes the “train,” she should be fed on freshly-killed pigeon or chicken flesh. It is not, however, necessary to tie back the hind claw of a kestril, as it is too weak to inflict an injury.
Third: the tail, especially that of the moulted and mature bird, is excellent for imping the broken tail-feathers of a sparrow-hawk.
Lesser Kestril.—As for the “White-clawed [the Lesser] Kestril” the only useful thing about it is its tail, which can be used for “imping.” In a wild state it preys on nothing but locusts and lizards.
In the country of Syria, on the way to Constantinople, I have observed this species nesting inside the rooms of houses, in the niches in the walls, and on the ledges294 in the rooms. No one molests the birds. They fly in flocks295 like pigeons. Whenever you see kestrils flying in a flock you may feel assured that they are the “white-clawed” species, for the black-clawed species never flies in flocks.
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.
289 For the use of a peregrine as a decoy vide Badminton Library volume, page 264.
290 The best bait for a kestril is a mole-cricket.
291 Wild peregrines and sakers will occasionally kill and eat kestrils and shikras. Trained hawks will also do so. Under a lagar’s eyrie, in a cliff, I have found the feathers of quite a number of kestrils. Major C. H. Fisher, in his Reminiscences of a Falconer (page 59), mentions that he once took a sparrow-hawk with a trained falcon.
292 Presumably the birds would “crab,” and the eyess being tame would not let go on the approach of the falconer. More than once, had I had a butterfly net, I could have placed it over a wild peregrine that was engrossed in a fight on the ground with a trained hawk.
293 Sār, “buzzard.”
294 Of the Eastern Red-Legged Falcon (Erythropus vespertinus of Jerdon, and E. amurensis of Blanford), Jerdon writes:—“Although the adult male in its mode of colouration resembles the kestrils, especially the lesser kestril, yet the colours of the young bird and female approach more to that of the Hobbies....”
“Fellowes says that it is very common in Asia Minor, building its nests under the roofs and sometimes even in the interior of houses.”
Jerdon also says that the claws are “fleshy.”
Dresser, in the Birds of Europe, writes:—“In many Turkish villages (as, for instance, Turbali) the place swarms with these hawks (F. Cenchris: Lesser Kestril).... Its eggs are placed without any nest under the eaves on the clay walls of houses and stables....”
295 In Kirman, Persia, in the beginning of April, 1902, a flock of Lesser Kestrils roosted for some days in the trees in the Consulate garden.
296 Two hostile tribes that live in the Syrian desert. They are noted for their breed of horses.
297 “Hard-penned,” i.e., hard-feathered.
298 “... When the pups [greyhound] are three or four months old, their education commences. The boys drive out of their holes the jerboa or the rat called “boualal” and set the pups at them. The latter by degrees get excited, dash after them at full speed, bark furiously at their holes, and only give up the pursuit to begin another. At the age of five or six months they are assigned a prey more difficult to catch—the hare....”—The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert, by E. Daumas. “McMaster says of its agility [the Indian Jerboa-rat or Kangaroo-rat—Gerbillus indicus]: ‘I have seen them when released from a trap baffle and elude dogs in the most extraordinary manner by wonderful jumps made over the backs, and apparently into the very teeth of their pursuers’.”—Mammalia of India; Sterndale.
299 Chark͟h-shinās, adj.