Part 3

In India one often sees a white-eyed buzzard, some mynas, a pair of doves, several bee-eaters, one or two king crows, and a roller, sitting, all in a row, on a telegraph wire within a few yards of one another; the first and the last, as likely as not, on the tops of the telegraph poles, looking like pillar saints. Contrast this state of affairs with what happens when a hawk or a falcon appears on the scene. “Take to woodland,” writes Phil Robinson, “and fill it with your birds of beauty and of song; put your ‘blackbird pipers in every tree,’ and have linnets ‘starting all along the bushes.’ Let melody burthen every bough and every cloud hold a lark. Have your doves in the pines, and your thrushes in the hawthorn; spangle your thistle-beds with restless goldfinches, and your furze with yellowhammers. The sun is shining brightly, and the countryside seems fairly overflowing with gladness. But with a single touch you can alter the whole scene; for let one hawk come skimming round that copse yonder, and the whole woodland is mute in the moment. Here and there shrill warning cries of alarm, and here and there a bird dipping into the central covert of the brake. But for the rest there might not be one winged thing alive in all the landscape. The hawk throws a shadow of desolation as it goes, its wings scatter fears on either side; silence precedes it and gloom pursues.”

Small birds fear the hawk and despise the _teesa_, because they know that the former is as swift and energetic as the latter is slow and lazy. But it is not easy to understand why the white-eyed buzzard does not prey upon wild birds, because its wings are, in proportion to its size, longer than those of most birds of prey. It is not that _Butastur_ considers birds unfit to eat. On the contrary, says Mr. C. H. Donald, “that he would love to catch a bird for his dinner is proved by the fact of his coming down to a bird behind a net as soon as he sees it, but I suppose experience has taught him that it is no use his trying to catch one in its wild state, and in full possession of its wings and feathers, and, consequently, he never tries.” Thus, we have no alternative but to regard the white-eyed buzzard as a degenerate, a bird that might starve in the midst of plenty.

When a hungry _Butastur_ sees flitting all around him potential meals in the shape of small birds, his feelings must be akin to those of the impecunious man in the comic song who, as he contemplates the insurance policy on the life of his shrewish wife, cries out: “Stone broke with fifty quid staring me in the face!” The white-eyed buzzard has perforce to feed upon very humble quarry, upon the creeping and crawling things, upon beetles and insects, with an occasional rat or frog. His usual method of capturing his prey is very similar to that of the shrike, or butcher-bird, or, to come nearer home, to that of the true buzzards. He takes up a position on a bare branch of a tree, a telegraph pole, a fence, or other point of vantage, such as a heap of _kankar_, and there waits patiently until some small creature wanders by. On to this he quietly drops, secures it in his feeble talons, and returns to the perch to devour his quarry and thus bring to a close one of nature’s little tragedies, of which millions are being daily enacted. After he has finished his dinner he loves to sit awhile, as the nursery rhyme tells us we should do, and quietly digest what he has eaten. I once disturbed a _Butastur_ that had just finished a heavy meal in the shape of a frog, with the result that the bird “brought up” the frog!

Sometimes the white-eyed buzzard beats over the ground in search of its quarry, but this is not his usual _modus operandi_. If you would see the white-eyed buzzard, go into an open place and watch for a brown bird a little larger than a crow, sitting motionless on some point of vantage, like Patience on a monument. By its sluggish habits, its small size, its white eye, and the whitish patch at the back of its head, you may recognise it. It utters a peculiar plaintive screaming call, which is heard mostly at the nesting season. “In February and March,” writes Mr. Donald, “just before the breeding season, these birds may be frequently seen soaring high up in the heavens, and giving vent to their plaintive call, and might be taken for falcons if it were not for their much more rounded wings. When at a height their breasts appear dark and their wings (lower surface) very light and silvery.”

Needless to say, the nest of this species is not a very skilfully constructed affair. It is not more beautiful than a _dak_ bungalow, but, like the latter, serves the purpose for which it is built. It is very like that of the common crow—a loosely-put-together collection of sticks, devoid of anything in the form of lining, and placed fairly high up in the fork of a tree. The tree selected is usually one with rather dense foliage, and one of a clump or row, in preference to a solitary tree; nevertheless, I have seen a nest in an isolated tree. The eggs, which are greyish white, are not laid until some time after the nest has been made ready. _Teesas_ are very noisy at the nesting season; the sitting hen utters constantly a mewing cry, which renders the nest easy to locate; but her vocal efforts pale into insignificance before those of the young hopefuls. These, to quote Mr. Benjamin Aitken, “keep up an incessant screaming for days before and after they leave the nest; so that you cannot pass within two hundred yards of a brood of nearly fledged or newly fledged birds without being made painfully aware of their existence and good spirits.”

VII FALCONRY IN INDIA

Lest the title of this chapter should lead the reader to indulge in expectations that will not be realised, let me hasten to say that, in my opinion, hawking is a much overrated pastime. This statement will, of course, rouse the ire of the keen falconer, who will tell me that hawking is the sport of kings, and that it has no equal. To such a defence of the sport the obvious reply is that it has almost entirely died out in England, and that in India, where there is every facility for it, very few Europeans care to indulge in it. In Persia and India falconry is carried on in precisely the same way as it used to be in England. There can be little doubt that the sport originated in the East, and was introduced into the British Isles in Anglo-Saxon times. The hoods, the jesses, the lures, the gauntlets that are used in India to-day are exactly like those portrayed in old English hawking prints.

Hawks fall into two classes, according to the method of catching their quarry. These may be compared respectively to sprinters and long-distance men among human athletes. They are known to falconers as the short-winged or yellow-eyed hawks and the long-winged or dark-eyed hawks. The former adopt what I may perhaps call slap-dash methods. A furious rush is made at the quarry, and if this be not secured at the first onslaught the chase is given up. The second class adopts the slow but sure method. The falcon, having sighted its quarry, settles down to a long pursuit, keeps on and on until it finds itself above its victim, on to which it stoops. The second class of raptorial birds, which includes all the falcons, affords the better kind of sport, because the following of the chase entails some hard riding. For falconry of this kind a stretch of flat, open country is a _sine qua non_, and, as this is comparatively easy to find in India, one would naturally expect that the long-winged form of falconry would be the most popular among Indians. But this is not so. In Northern India, at any rate, that species of falconry that does not involve hard riding on the part of the falconer is the most practised. The goshawk (_Astur palabarius_) is the hawk most commonly used.

Perhaps the best method of conveying an idea of falconry to one who has not witnessed the sport is to describe a day’s actual experience. The month is December, and the place Oudh. This means a sunny but perfectly cool day, so that riding, even when the sun is at its zenith, is delightful. Our party consists of an Indian gentleman—a Sikh and a large land-holder—who owns the hawks, and three Europeans all well mounted, also the chief falconer, indifferently mounted, who carries on his gloved forearm a goshawk. Then there are two other falconers on foot, one carrying a goshawk and the other a sparrow-hawk (_Accipiter nisus_). Half a dozen beaters and three mongrel terriers complete the party. The sparrow-hawk is hooded, while the goshawk is not, being of a less excitable nature. The hood is a leather cap, constructed so as to cover up the wearer’s eyes but not her beak. The hood terminates in a point like a helmet. In the summit some plumes are stuck, so that the hooded bird has a fantastic appearance. Sparrow-hawks and peregrines are made to wear these hoods when taken out, until the falconer espies quarry, when he unhoods his hawk and lets the ends of the jesses go. The jesses are short straps made of soft leather, which all trained hawks and falcons always wear. The goshawks are both females. In all species of the _raptores_—listen to this, ye suffragettes!—the female is larger and bolder than the male, and hence is more highly esteemed by the falconer. The female goshawk is known as a _baz_, and is worth anything up to Rs. 150, while the male, called the _jurra_, will never fetch more than Rs. 80. The goshawks whose exploits I am about to recount cost Rs. 80 and Rs. 60 respectively. They have been trained more especially to take peafowl.

The party sets out in a southerly direction across an uneven plain, much intersected by dried-up water-courses. There is no cultivation on the plain, which is to a large extent covered with long _sarpat_ grass and other xerophilous plants. We move along in an irregular line, the dogs and beaters doing their best to put up game. Suddenly a quail rises. “Let loose the sparrow-hawk,” cries the Sirdar. But, alas, the man carrying that bird has lagged behind, so the quail escapes. I may here say that on nine occasions out of ten when out hawking the man with the proper hawk is not where he should be. We continue our course, and presently come to a narrow river running through a deep _nullah_. Here two or three cormorants come flying overhead. They are forthwith “spotted” by the goshawks, which have all the time been eagerly looking about them in all directions. Having seen the cormorants, they begin tugging excitedly at their jesses. The falconers liberate the goshawks, and away they go in pursuit. After flying about eighty yards, first one goshawk, then the other, gives up the chase, and each repairs to the tree that happens to be nearest it. Then the falconers go up and show the birds pieces of meat, in order to entice them back to the fist. One baz immediately flies to the bait. Not so the other. She sits perched in her tree with an air of _j’y suis, j’y reste_. In a few seconds some crows catch sight of her and proceed to mob her by flying around her and squawking loudly. However, not one of them dares to touch her. Presently she too flies to her trainer, and the party moves on.

We next ford the river. On the far side the country is still more rugged, but contains more trees. Presently there is a great commotion in the thicket, and up gets a great peacock. The goshawks are again released and give chase. They fly low and make straight for the peacock, upon which they gain rapidly. We ride hard after them. After a flight of perhaps two hundred yards the hawks, when close up to the object of their chase, give up the pursuit, and fly to trees hard by. I ask their owner why they did not secure the peacock. He replies: “They would have taken it had it been a hen. They are not used to the male bird. Alas, my best hawk, which would take the cock, died last week!” Let me here remark that I have never yet come across a falconer whose best hawk had not recently died. This is the inevitable excuse for the apparently invariable failure of the falcon to secure its quarry. To cut a long story short, neither of those goshawks secured anything that day. Later, the sparrow-hawk was sent after an unfortunate myna (_Acridotheres tristis_), which it secured after a chase of perhaps a dozen yards. Its talons struck the myna in the neck, and it soon killed it, not, however, before the poor little creature had emitted some heart-rending shrieks. The goshawk must occasionally catch something, or it would not fetch so large a price, and would not be so popular a bird with falconers in Northern India, but I imagine that on most days the hawking party returns without having secured anything.

Let me now give a brief account of hawking with the Bhairi, or peregrine falcon (_Falco peregrinus_). The scene, this time, is a huge expanse of flat plain in the Punjab, near the River Jhelum. The hawks belong to a European. We have ridden for several hours, not having succeeded in putting up quarry of any kind. As the falconer seems to have anticipated this, and as he has with him on trial a new peregrine, which he wants to see at work, an unfortunate crow, which was captured in the morning and has been carried round in a bag with us, is let go. He flies in a very stiff manner. When he has flown some eighty yards the peregrine is unhooded and let go after him. She at once flies upwards, and in a few seconds is above the crow, who, seeing her, drops to the ground and lies there on his back prepared to show fight. The falcon stoops at him, but seems to be afraid to tackle him on the ground. The falconer then runs up to him and tries to make him get up; but he refuses, so he is picked up and thrown into the air. The falcon at once stoops at him, but before she reaches him the crow has again dropped to the ground, and still the falcon refuses to close with him. “That bird is of no use,” is the comment of my host, an assertion which I do not feel inclined to contradict.

The only other kinds of falconry I have witnessed are those with hawk-eagles (_Spizaëtus nepalensis_), shikras (_Astur badius_), and merlins (_Æsalon regulus_). Hodgson’s hawk-eagle is so large a bird that to watch him dashing after his quarry is a fine sight. It is said that this species can be trained to capture chinkara (_Gazella bennetti_). However, I have only seen it in pursuit of a hare that had been previously caught and then let loose. The hawk-eagle overtook this before it had gone fifty yards.

Hawking with the shikra is, in my opinion, very poor sport, for this little bird of prey makes but one dash at its quarry, and at once desists if this does not enable it to overhaul it. It is usually flown at quails or mynas. While waiting for its victim it is carried on the hand, but is not hooded. When one of the kind of bird to which it has been trained is flushed, the hawker takes the shikra in his hand, holds it between his thumb and fingers, and then throws it like a javelin in the direction of its quarry. Thus it enjoys the benefit of a flying start, but, notwithstanding this, it generally fails to make a catch.

The contest between a merlin and a hoopoe is an exceedingly pretty sight. The hoopoe is not a very rapid flier, but he is a past master in the art of jinking and dodging, and the manner in which he times the onslaught of the merlin, and jerks himself a couple of inches to right or to left, is a sight for the gods. The merlin, thus cheated of his victim, is carried on by sheer force of momentum some sixty yards before he can turn for another dash at the hoopoe. Meanwhile the latter is steadily flapping towards cover. The merlin is no more successful in his second dash, nor in his third or his fourth; on each occasion the hoopoe escapes, apparently by the proverbial hair’s-breadth. A single merlin is usually not clever enough to capture the wily hoopoe, but when two of them act in concert they usually succeed in doing so.

Such, then, is falconry as I have seen it. I concede that my experience has not been great, but I have witnessed enough to enable me to understand how it is that shooting has almost entirely displaced it as a pastime.

The training of hawks is, of course, most interesting, and must be a very fascinating pursuit to those engaged in it. When once the hawk or falcon has been trained, it appears to me that the best of the fun is over.

The going out in search of quarry seems only an excuse for spending a day in the open on horseback under very pleasant conditions.

VIII HAWKS IN MINIATURE

Even as the earth is overrun by dacoits, robbers, and highwaymen in all places where the arm of the law is not far-reaching and hard-striking, so is the air infested with bandits. These feathered marauders fall into three classes, according to the magnitude of their quarry. There are, first, the eagles, falcons, and hawks, which attack creatures of considerable size. Then follow the shrikes or butcher-birds—pocket editions of the raptores—which prey upon the small fry among reptiles, mammals, and birds, also upon the larger insects. Lastly come the fly-catchers, which content themselves with microscopic booty, with trifles that the larger birds of prey do not deem worthy of notice. These last are able to swallow their victims bodily. Not so the shrikes and birds of prey, whose quarry has to be devoured piecemeal, to be captured, killed, then torn to pieces.

Similarity of calling not infrequently engenders similarity of appearance. Swifts and swallows afford a striking instance of this. Alike externally, they are widely separated morphologically. So is it with the shrikes and the raptores. The earlier naturalists were misled by this outward likeness, and, in consequence, classed the swifts with the swallows and the shrikes with the falcons.

Many are the points of resemblance between the greater and the lesser bandits of the air. The ferocity of their mien is apparent to the most casual observer. Michelet speaks of the eagle as having a “repulsively ferocious figure, armed with invincible talons, and a beak tipped with iron, which would kill at the first blow.” Even more sinister is the aspect of the shrike. The broad black streak that runs from the bill to the nape of the neck serves to accentuate the fierce expression of the eye. The American naturalist Burroughs speaks of the shrike as a “bird with the mark of Cain upon him, . . . the assassin of the small birds, whom he often destroys in pure wantonness, or to sup upon their brains.”

Much has been written about the cruelty of birds of prey. Their calling is indeed a barbarous one; they undoubtedly inflict much pain; but these are not reasons why they should be spoken of as villains of the deepest dye, as criminals worthy of the noose. The bird of prey kills his quarry because it is his nature to do so. He regards his victims as so many elusive loaves of bread, made for his consumption, to be obtained for the catching. The fly-catcher holds similar views regarding his quarry. We should bear in mind that the average insectivorous bird kills in the course of his life a vastly greater number of living things than does the eagle. The robin, for example, has been known to devour two and a half times its weight in earthworms in a single day. Were the daily tale of its victims placed end to end they would form a wriggling line fourteen feet in length. Yet writers abuse the fierce and vicious eagle, while they belaud the gentle and good robin. Thus Michelet writes with typical romantic fervour: “These birds of prey, with their small brains, offer a striking contrast to the numerous amiable and plainly intelligent species which we find among the smaller birds. The head of the former is only a beak; that of the latter has a face. What comparison can be made between these giant brutes and the intelligent, all-human bird, the robin redbreast, which at this moment hovers about me, perches on my shoulder or my paper, examines my writing, warms himself at the fire, or curiously peers through the window to see if the spring-time will not soon return?”

Writing of this description is possibly very magnificent, but it is not natural history. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If it is wicked of the falcon to devour a duck, I fail to see that it is virtuous of the robin to gobble up a worm.

But to return to the shrike. His beak is very falcon-like. The short, arched, upper mandible, with its pointed, downwardly-directed tip and strong projecting tooth, is a weapon admittedly adapted to the tearing-up of raw flesh. The butcher-bird waits for his quarry much as the buzzard does, sitting immobile on the highest branch of a bush or low tree, whence he scans the surface of the earth. Something moving on the ground arrests his attention. In an instant he has swooped and seized a grasshopper. A second later he is back on his perch, grasping his victim. I have already stated that shrikes feed upon small mammals, birds and reptiles, and large insects. These last make up by far the greater portion of his menu. Often have I watched the smaller species of Indian shrike obtaining a meal, but never have I seen any of these capture anything larger than an insect. Mr. W. Jesse says of the Indian grey shrike (_Lanius lahtora_)—the largest of our species: “It feeds on crickets, locusts, lizards, and the like. It may occasionally seize a sickly or a young bird, but I have never actually seen it do so.” Other observers have been more fortunate. Thus “Eha” says: “Sometimes it sees a possible chance in a flock of little birds absorbed in searching for grass seeds. Then it slips from its watch-tower and, gliding softly down, pops into the midst of them without warning, and strikes its talons into the nearest.” Similarly Benjamin Aitken writes: “The rufous-backed shrike, though not so large as the grey shrike, is a much bolder and fiercer bird. It will come down at once to a cage of small birds exposed at a window, and I once had an amadavat killed and partly eaten through the wires by one of these shrikes which I saw in the act with my own eyes. The next day I caught the shrike in a large basket, which I had set over the cage of amadavats. On another occasion I exposed a rat in a cage for the purpose of attracting a hawk, and in a few minutes found a _Lanius erythronotus_ fiercely attacking the cage on all sides.”

I am disposed to regard such cases as the exceptions which prove the rule that the food of, at any rate, the smaller species of shrike, consists mainly of insects. This would explain why so few shrikes’ “larders” are discovered in India. Every popular book on natural history describes how the butcher-bird, having killed his victim, impales it upon a thorn, and leaves it there to grow tender preparatory to devouring it. I have not been lucky enough to come across one of these larders. Other naturalists have been more fortunate, and we may take it as an established fact that even the smaller Indian species of butcher-birds sometimes impale their victims on thorns. The existence of such larders is easily accounted for. When the little butcher captures a victim so large that it has to be torn to pieces before consumption, he has to find some method of fixing it while tearing it up. He is not heavy enough to pin it to the ground with his talons, as a raptorial bird does, so must perforce utilise the fork of a tree or a large thorn. Having taken his fill, he flies away, leaving the remains of his dinner impaled on the thorn, where it is discovered by some enterprising ornithologist.

Fifteen species of _Lanius_ are described as existing in India. Of these the three most commonly seen are the rufous-backed, the bay-backed, and the grey species.