Part 2 — CHAPTER XVI THE SHUNQĀR OR JERFALCON
D. C. (Douglas Craven) Phillott translation
Shunqār or Jerfalcon.—The Jerfalcon[151] is a species known to me only by description. During the whole of my sporting career, I have neither come across it myself, nor known a falconer to whom it was more than a name.
Specimen brought from Russia.—In the year of the Flight 1284[152] a strange falcon which I take to be a Shunqār was bought in Russia for a great price, and presented as a curiosity to His Lofty and Imperial Highness, the Shāh of Shāhs, the Shadow of God. Out of the plenitude of his bounty and the immensity of his condescension, His Most Noble and Exalted Majesty delivered it into the humble keeping of his servant [i.e., the author], decreeing that it should be trained to the flight of the Common Crane. The Royal Gift was accepted by this slave, with due tokens of humility: he kissed the falcon’s jesses and then placed it on his obedient head:—
I stood before the King as might a slave; The Royal hand to me the falcon gave. I placed it on my head in fashion meet When I’d imprinted kisses on its feet.
Scanning the bird with a falconer’s eye, I saw that three flight-feathers of each wing were old and unshed. It was evident it had been taken up while still in the moult, so I had it replaced in the mew[153] and fed on fresh birds, with frequent changes of diet. Three months later it was taken up clean moulted, not a single old feather remaining.
As it may interest falconers, I append a description of this particular falcon.
Description.—In size it was about half as large again as a fine female Saker Falcon.[154] The plumage of the back and head was a brown ash colour, and each feather of the back and tail was marked with two tiny white spots. From the back of the neck to the rump, the plumage was ash-coloured, and covered with small yellowish-white spots. The breast was white, each breast feather being tipped with one small black spot and margined with black marks interlacing each other like the links of a chain. The tarsi[155] were robust and short; the feet small in proportion to its size, but stout and powerful; the claws and beak black; the iris dark, and the thighs[156] as thick as those of a male eagle.[157] The wing in length was something betwixt that of the long-winged and short-winged hawks, longer than that of a qizil or t̤arlān, and shorter than that of a shāhīn or a saker. The tail was broad and full of spots and markings. Like the Qara-qūsh-i ā,īna-lī,[158] it had a few stiff white feathers in the back, whether a mark of the species or merely a sign of old age, I am unable to say. (White feathers do occasionally make their appearance in aged sakers.) In weight it equalled nearly three sakers.[159] From my experience of hawks I should say that, when it reached me, it was in its tenth or twelfth moult. What its immature plumage may have been like, I cannot even guess.
Teaching the Falcon to Know its Name.—After removing this falcon from the mew,[160] I commenced her training with the utmost care. I named her “Shunqār.” By feeding her through the hood, calling her by name the while, she quickly learnt to recognize her name and associate it with a good meal.[161]
When she had somewhat abated her high condition and had begun to show a proper inclination for food, I attached a strong “creance”[162] to her jesses and carried her out into the field to lure her to a lure of crane’s wings. Unhooded by my falconer she started with eagerness, but had hardly flown a few feet before she subsided to the ground and attempted to finish the distance on foot. I examined her carefully. Her feathers were perfect, and she appeared sound in wind and limb. What could be the cause of her extraordinary behaviour? Puzzled and perplexed, I buried my head in the collar of reflection, determined to unravel the tangled skein of the difficulty. Still, ransack my brains as I might, the clue to the mystery eluded me. I then screwed up my courage, and putting my trust in God, removed the “creance” from her feet, and called her again. The result was much as before. I bit the finger of astonishment, and by reason of the falcon’s great infirmity became plunged in the abyss of despondency. Burying my head in the collar of reflection my thoughts drifted to those animal-gardens in Europe, where people buy strange beasts and birds for ridiculous prices, and after turning them into a public show for a few years, tire of them and put them up to public auction. It then dawned on me that my falcon must have come from one of those very gardens, and that, like a long-caged parrot, which, wild defied the swiftness of the Sparrow-Hawk,[163] can now flutter no higher than its own perch, it too from long imprisonment had grown stiff-jointed and wing-tied.
Daily Exercise.—That the falcon might recover her lost powers of flight, I set about exercising her daily. Morning and evening I used to bear her to the top of a high mound[164] and cast her off, giving her five flights at each exercise. On the sixteenth day, instead of, as usual, merely flying down to the level, she went off some distance and settled on a second mound. I decided this was sufficient and commenced calling her to the lure, luring her at first from high ground to a lower level.
“Trains.”—When her powers of flight were fully recovered I gave her a certain number of “trains,” and gradually succeeded in thoroughly entering her to common crane. At last one joyous day, on the auspicious occasion of the Royal return from a pilgrimage to Qum,[165] I unhooded her at a common crane near the caravan stage of Pul-i Dallāk,[166] and in the Imperial presence of the Shāh—let our souls be sacrificed for him! Right nobly the falcon acquitted herself, “towering” up into the clouds, and striking a huge crane down to the dust of the earth.
And on the spot Kāshānī’s spirit fled, You might have said he ne’er was else than dead.
Disposition of the “Shunqār.”—Judging from my small experience, I should say that the Shunqār Falcon has naturally a docile and fearless disposition. At the moment I write (i.e., in the year of the Flight, 1285),[167] the bird I have described has been in my possession just two years. During this period she has twice moulted. This year, I rejoice to say, she was “full summed”[168] quite three months earlier than last.
Suffers from Heat.—Though kept on a damp bed of pebbles and sand, in the Bāg͟h-i Raz-kanda, in the cool region of Shimrānāt,[169] she yet feels the heat greatly, so that even in this cool climate of Shimrān she has to be well supplied with ice and snow, both of which she swallows freely.
Haggard Tiercel.—This year—it being the Spring of A.H. 1286—owing to the high fortune of His Majesty (sacrificed be our souls for him!), and the kindly aid of Heaven, the royal trappers have snared a “tiercel” of this species. It was caught in the district of K͟hār and Varamīn,[170] and is a fully moulted “haggard.”[171] It is now, in the beginning of this Spring, something less than two months since it first came into my hands; and I have now placed it in the mew. I have taken with it both purple[172] and common heron. This “tiercel” is a stout and heavy bird about as large as a female saker. Its flight is lofty and swift; its nature noble and generous. I have now set it down to moult and am anxious as to the result.
Of the Shunqār it is fabled that when flown at a flock[173] of cranes it does not act like ordinary falcons and single out and kill a solitary individual; that its lofty and imperious nature permits it to cease from slaughter only when every crane in the flock is a carcass on the ground. Now this is a superlative falsehood. My shunqār, like other hawks, kills only one. It has, indeed, chanced to me that, when flying a passage saker at a flock of cranes, the falcon, stooping from a height and dealing a crane a deadly blow, has then shot upwards by its impetus, and finding itself close to a second bird, has seized the unexpected opportunity, and “bound”[174] to the second crane’s head and so added a second victim to the bag. Once indeed I saw three cranes killed in this manner by a single hawk. Such occurrences are, however, lucky accidents. No hawk that I ever knew systematically acted in this manner.[175]
It is also commonly believed that the Shunqār is the acknowledged sovereign of the hawk tribe, and that should one be placed in the mew, every hawk will step down from its perch in token of humble submission. This, too, is a falsehood, pure and simple,—or else my young man is not a shunqār. At the moment I write I have more than fifty hawks of various kinds in my mews, but not one of them has ever left its perch, or honoured this sovereign, or shown respect in any manner of way. What is more, my fine gentleman the Shunqār stands very much in awe of eagles. Of course I am assuming that this hawk is a “shunqār;” equally of course I may be mistaken. All I know is that neither have I, nor has the oldest falconer in Persia, ever seen a falcon like it. The manner it stoops and recovers[176] is unequalled, either by the Shahin or the Saker. I have several times flown it at common crane with a good shāhīn[177] trained to this flight, and it has always reached the quarry and bound to it before the latter came up.[178] Every one says it is a shunqār. I say so, too. Of the “’tis” and the “’tisn’t” of the case, God alone is the Judge.