Note 239 — Chapter XX · THE EYESS SAKER FALCON

All sakers in a wild state occasionally prey on houbara. Trained haggards, but not young passage hawks, will as a rule take hare without being entered by a “train.” Perhaps during the nesting season, the parent birds are driven to killing hare. I have seen a young passage hawk of mine, flying close to the ground, carry a hare for two or three hundred yards. The hare, a fine hill specimen, weighed 4½ lbs., while the saker weighed only 2 lbs. 4 oz. I have seen an “intermewed” saker stoop at, and strike, a large hare on the head, with such force that the hare never moved again. In Dresser’s Birds of Europe it is stated on the authority of Colonel Przevalsky that in Mongolia, in Winter, the chief food of the saker is the Alpine hare.