Vol. Ill, No. 6.] Note on the Red-headed Merlin. 397 



wings. Not knowing this I called it to the ordinary black lure of 

 the Panjal), made of crows* wings ; it came to it and stooped 

 at it without hesitation. My sais once unexpectedly came across 

 this bird, which had been lost for a night, chasing some birds 

 in a grove. Having no lure he swung his shoe round his head 

 and the turumtz at once * bound ' to it and was secured. 



Turumtts^ for large quarry — pajddy-birds and rollers — should 

 be broken to the hood ; but it requires a very skilful hooder, 

 with a small hand and a very light touch, to hood these diminu- 

 tive hawks without making them hood-shy. If flown at mainas, 

 they need not be hooded. 



They must "be fed twice a day, and on small birds. Indians, 

 through laziness, sometimes feed them on goat's heart, all the 

 fibre and skin, etc., being removed ; so fed thej will never be 

 in proper flying condition. 



Being permanent residents of India they can be kept 

 through the moult, but it must be a very exceptional bird that 

 repays this keep. The advantage of the red-headed merlin 

 is that, like the lagaf and shzJcra^ it can be flown during the 

 rains, when other hawks are not in working condition, or have 

 not arrived in the country. 



Kapurthala falconers ^ have assured me that some thirty 

 years ago it used, in their State, to be trained to kite * ; 

 and a report was rife in the State that a common crane 

 had once been taken by one, I have, with my own eys, seen a 

 common heron {Ardea ctnerea) taken by one. His Highness, 

 the late Mir 'Ali Murad ^ of Sindh, in response to a qiiery, gen- 

 erously sent me two falconers to Dera Ismail Khan with a * cast '* 

 of red-headed merlins trained to this unusual flight. The birds 

 were ' intermewed ' ones of one moult, and were not in hard 

 condition. They had apparently never been trained to the Inre ; 

 the only exercise they got was flying round the head of the fal- 

 coner at the extent of their long leashes made of a twist of 

 yellow silk,^ after a morsel of meat waved backwards and for- 

 wards in his hand. A heron was duly flushed, and the merlin, 

 uuhooded, started in feeble pursuit, fluttering like an uncertain 

 butterfly or like a piece of paper trying to fly. It carried no 

 bell and the heron took no notice of it. Suddenly it sat on the 



1 The Kapurthala State establishment of hawks and falcons was abolished 



shortly after 1887. Owing to a lack of supervision, the race of old-faahioned 

 falconers had degenerated into a useless, Iftzy, and incompetent set of rascals. 



2 ChUy Hindnetani, and hil Panjabi, the name of the common Indian 

 kite {Milvus govinda), is sometimes incorrectly given to the white scavenger 

 vulture {Npophron percnojpterus). The latter, though larger, would be an 



easier quarry. 



3 An enthnsiastic and experienced falconer, and probably the last Indian 



gentleman of wealth who tept up an old-fashioned establishment of hawks and 

 bird-catchers. 



* * Cast * two hawks trained to fly in company. 



B "A merlin sat upon her wrist 



Held by a leash of silken twist." 



Lay of the Last Minstrel^ Canto VI, 5. 



