Chapter VIII as inhabiting ruins and being useful for a preliminary

flight for a _shāhīn_ that is to be entered to stone-plover. Panjabī falconers call the spotted owlet (_Athene Brama_) _chug͟hd_. This species is not uncommon in Persia, being often found in holes in garden walls. The flight is feeble and slow, and it is easily taken by any hawk. The flesh is palatable to hawks.

[553] _Chāk͟hrūq_, T. Lane, in a note to Chapter xx, Vol. III, of his incomparable translation of the _Arabian Nights_, says that the stone-plover or _karawān_ is a favourite cage-bird with the Turks and Egyptians.

[554] _Pas dawr-i chāk͟hrūq bi-gīr tā bi-k͟hwābad_: the author’s meaning is not clear.

[555] _Dastī_, adj.

[556] _Hūbara_ or _āhūbara_, Per.; and _ḥubārạ_, Ar.

[557] _Murg͟hābī-yi sar-sabz_, P.; _murg͟hābī-yi shil bāsh_, P.T.; _shil_, for T. _yeshil_, “green.”

[558] _Qāz._

[559] _Ḥuqār_ (for _ʿuqār_); _vide_ page 136, note 580.

[560] _Pilla pilla bālā mī-ravad_: _pilla_ (m. c.) is the rung of a ladder, a step, etc.

[561] _Dast-par._

[562] _Kulāg͟h-i quzqūn._

[563] _Du si durnā-yi nazdīk-i ārām va amīn._ _Durnā_, P., or _t̤urnā_, T., is the common crane; also called _kulank_ or _kulang_—the “coolan” of Anglo-Indians.

[564] The common crane has a very sharp claw, which it uses in defence. Even if the falconer make in at once, the hawk may suffer a permanent injury before he arrives to her assistance.

[565] _Dila va past-fit̤rat_, “ignoble”: _dila_, apparently here the diminutive of _dil_, “of small heart.”

[566] “Haggards” will often unbind to avoid the concussion on striking the ground and then rebind. The translator had a haggard saker trained to kite, which never failed to unbind; he cannot, however, recollect a case of a young passage hawk, peregrine or saker, unbinding either from heron or kite. The Persian author is here writing either of the eyess or of the young _shāhīn_, captured some time before September.

[567] _Chug͟hd_ or _bāya-qūsh._

[568] _Bī-jān-tar va kūchak-tar va maflūk-tar._

[569] In Europe the heron was justly considered a difficult quarry. Its powers of flight, however, have been greatly over-rated. A heron, even “on the passage,”[570] is an easy _flight_ to a good passage hawk. But hawks, at any rate after the first flight or two, fly at this quarry with great deliberation, and stoop at it with some caution, for the heron when high up makes half-hearted dabs with its beak at the hawk. An experienced hawk generally knocks about the heron by stooping several times at the shoulder or point of the wing. I have known a “haggard” break the heron’s wing by a stoop. Some hawks bind to the heron’s feet sticking out behind, and so drag it down close to earth, out of range of its beak; they then close, on the ground.

[570] “On the passage,” _i.e._, on its regular flight to or from its feeding ground.

[571] _Bā-ham janāḥ andāk͟htan._

[572] _Siyāh-chashm_, “black-eyed.”

[573] _Ḥarām_, “prohibited; that which is unlawful.”

[574] _Kurdistān_, in Turkey in Asia, N.E. of Mesopotamia.

[575] The black ibis, a favourite quarry in India for the peregrine, is not found in Persia, Baghdad, etc. Gulls are found in the vicinity of Shiraz, notably in the open ground round the “_Tak͟ht-i Jamshīd_” or Persepolis.

[576] _Baḥrī._

[577] _Shāhīn-i t̤ūrī_, _lit._ a netted shahin: _t̤ūrī_ for _tūrī_.

[578] _Shāhīn-i āshiyānī._

[579] By “_shāhīn_” here the author presumably refers to the eyess.