HAWKING-BIRDS. 
more attractive tlian tlie male. The latter is not more than 
two-thirds the length of his better half. He is not so “ well- 
shouldered,” and his wings are not so powerful. The male 
and female goshawks differ in colour. In the female, the 
whole of the upper parts, including the ear-coverts, are of a 
deep brown; the back is mottled, and the quills and tail- 
feathers margined with dusky red. In the male, the reddish- 
brown pervades the greater part of the plumage, and the 
mottling ' is much paler. In both birds the naked parts are 
yellow, the irides grey, and the eyes quick and piercing. 
It is a solitary bird, and delights in wild inaccessible cliffs 
near the seashore, where it can build and breed without 
molestation, and yet be within an easy fly of the game on 
which it feeds. It is excessively destructive to mountain- 
game, by reason of its destroying the parent birds and leaving 
the nestlings to perish. It is docile and easily tamed, but is 
not nearly so prolific as the other hawks, the number of its 
eggs rarely exceeding three, and never four. 
There exists in Syria a small variety of the goshawk, called 
by the natives the “ shabeen.” Despite its diminutive size, 
the shabeen will, it is said, attack, and successfully, the boldest 
of bold birds, the eagle. Says Dr. Russel, in his account of 
Aleppo, “ Were there not several gentlemen in England to bear 
witness to the fact, I should hardly venture to assert, that 
with this bird, which is about the size of a pigeon, the inhabi- 
tants sometimes take large eagles. The hawk, in former times, 
was taught to seize the eagle under the pinion, and thus, 
depriving him of the use of one wing, both birds fell to the 
ground together ; but I am informed that the present mode is 
to teach the hawk to fix on the back between the wings, which 
has the same effect, only that the bird, tumbling down more 
slowly, the falconer has more time to come to his hawk’s 
assistance ; but in either case, if he be not very expeditious, 
the falcon is inevitably destroyed. I never saw the shabeen 
fly at eagles, that sport being disused in my time ; but I have 
often seen him take herons and storks. The hawk, when 
thrown off, flies for some time in a horizontal line, not six 
feet from the ground; then, mounting perpendicularly with 
astonishing swiftness, he seizes his prey under the wing, and 
both together come tumbling to the ground. If the falconer 
is not, however, very expeditious, the game soon disengages 
itself.” 
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