510 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVI. 



birds, and the performance often goes on for an hour or two. Even by keeping 

 trained falcons and flying them often, one never or rarely sees anything like 

 this, as the best trained hawks can never equal wild ones in flying, though it is 

 wonderful what they can do, considering the small amount of exercise they 

 must necessarily be dependent on. 



I think that the strong breeze almost always blowing over the fort at Bhuj 

 is the chief attraction to the eagles and falcons, who come there to soar in and 

 enjoy it. The fort is on a hill about 500 feet high and these birds generally 

 cruise about over it at varying heights. I have seen as many as six laggar 

 falcons (^Falco jugger) playing about there at the same time, stooping at each 

 other and at rats, lizards and flying insects, dragon-flies, &c, which seem to be 

 their principal food. 



Laggars do not seem to take birds very often, though of course thty do so 

 sometimes, and I have seen them after blue-rock pigeons at Bhuj. 



When flying over the fort the Laggars always kept very much on the move. 

 They never hovered like the eagles but kept dashing about all over the place, 

 high over the fort at one moment, down on the ground the next, away over 

 the city half a mile distant and back over the fort again a few seconds later, and 

 so on. 



During the whole of the hot weather I saw no Shahins (Falco peregrlnator) 

 only Laggars, but in October the Laggars disappeared, after which I rarely 

 saw them, but Shahins took their place, though I did not see very many of 

 the<e. Their flying was simply grand. They went on in a very similar 

 manner to the Laggars, only they flew ten times as fast when putting on 

 the pace, and their whole style and manner of flying was most strikingly 

 superior. 



I believe that Hobbies have been stated to be the swiftest of hawks. I very 

 much doubt their being able to even approach Shahins and Peregrines in 

 speed. 



My father, who hawked in India for many years and a good deal at home 

 too, with every trainable kind of hawk, used often to state this as his opinion, 

 and now that I have had a good many opportunities of watching Hobbies, 

 Peregrines and Shahins both in this country and in China, I believe that 

 Hobbies cannot compete with the larger falcons at all, beautiful fliers though 

 they are. 



A little Shahin Tiercel that I often saw at Bhuj used to travel something 

 like a shell through the air. He went so fast you could hardly follow him 

 with your eyes if he passed close, and he made a loud swishing noise that you 

 could hear a couple of hundred yards away. I have seen him stoop a length 

 of several hundred yards at a flock of small birds, get one and carry it up high 

 over the fort, eat it on the wing and go on playing about and actually 

 stoop at others, with one already in his foot. I did not see him take a second 

 when he already had one, and I suppose he did this only from high spirits 

 and not in real earnest. 



