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392 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [May, 1907. 



f 



and then suddenly shoot up perpendicularly into their midst. 

 In the dusk it may sometimes be seen killing bats.* In Dex^a 

 Ghazi Khan Cantonment I have seen shahins pick up a paroquet 

 from a number that were feeding on the ground, and carry it off 

 alive. I once caught a young shahin that had the ends of all of 

 its flight feathers in both -wings eaten off, apparently by paro- 

 quets it had caught. My falconers were one evening catching 

 paroquets by suspending a net between two trees on the route that 

 certain flocks took every evening on their way to roost : they cut 

 the throats of any birds caught and threw them into the verandah 

 of the house. Suddenly a shahin dashed into the verandah and 

 carried off one of the dead parrots. 



In the Panjab the shahins are now seldom trained. In the 

 Chhach-Hazara district, however, a few are generally kept for 

 "waiting on" flights at teal. The best will kill duck. Else- 

 where they are sometimes flown out of the hood at small quarry. 

 An experienced and very skilful Panjabi falconer told me he had 

 often trained shahins to houbara, but that after killing one or two, 

 finding the quarry too strong for them, they invariably gave up 

 and declined this flight altogether. Colonel C. Griffiths, late of 

 the 3rd Sikhs, told me that though he once had a *cast' of 

 shahins that flew houbara well, this quarry was in reality too 

 strong for them. 



Falconers of Chhach-Hazara tell me that young ' passage- 

 hawks ' caught later than September are so wedded to small 

 quarry that they are seldom, if ever, of much use. 



Shahins are less steady than peregrines. In the spring they 

 become flighty,^ and are then liable to sail away ignoring every 

 lure. The amount of food given them, too, requires to be more 

 carefully regulated. In a wild state they do not appear to be 

 very persevering; if they fail to take a bird in the first two or 

 three stoops or dashes, they give up and seek a fresh and easier 

 quarry. For a short distance they appear to be faster than 

 peregrines, and are probably more adroit: They have, however, 

 one good quality : they moult quickly and easily and are in flying 



condition early in the season when peregrines are still in the 

 moult. 



As Indians know nothing of " flying at hack, " eyess shahins 

 must be kept by them more as pets than anything else. Lieu- 

 tenant Colonel S. Biddulph, however, has at different times had 

 ^several eyesses that he * hacked ' and afterwards kept for some 

 seasons ; these always flew excellently during the early months of 

 the cold- weather. 



The best way to hack hawks in India is to suspend the lid 

 of a basket under a shady spreading tree, and to fill the lid with 



-j>- 



* Though peregrines, red shahins and red-headed merlins kill bafca 

 in a wild state, I have found that when well fed and fat during the moult, 

 they rather dislike the flesh. 



2 In the Kaparthala State, where the saker was the favourite falcon, it 

 was the custom to call shahins yatvd, i.e., foolish or flighty. 



