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THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
"Jullundri," the saker shown to-day on the block on the lawn, was moulted in
the plains last year, and I regret to say that she has lost a great deal of her speed
and dash in consequence. She used to kill kite in grand style in India before she
had moulted, but now she is too slow for rook hawking in England, although she
has killed this quarry.
My bazdar, Wazir Khan, excelled in training sakers to kite. In India every
village, hamlet, and barracks swarms with the Fork-tailed Kite, which act as
scavengers. A peculiarity of this flight is that a good kite-hawk will stick to
the kite she was originally slipped at, although there may be a hundred about
all trying to mob her and distract her attention. The kite seeks safety by
mounting into the sky, and the falcon steadily pursues the same tactics and
mounts in an enormous spiral column, until they often both disappear from sight.
I remember once slipping "Jullundri" at a "jungli" kite—that is, not a kite
that is always pottering about a village, but one born and bred in the open wastes,
and accustomed to travel immense distances for its daily food, and consequently
much stronger on the wing than its village brother. The kite was some thirty
yards over my head when I slipped the falcon, and immediately began to ring up
in huge circles, and so easily that I thought she looked like beating the falcon by
sheer strength of wing. But "Jullundri" meant business, and I lay on my back
shading my eyes, and watched them till both disappeared from view. We were
left thus for ten or more minutes, straining our eyes, until keen-sighted old
Wazir Khan suddenly shouted, "There, sahib! ride," at the same time
pointing far away down wind. I could see nothing, but immediately mounted
and rode off as hard as my Arab pony could take me. Gradually I saw what I
thought must be the falcon, and I was right—for a second later I clearly made
out pursuer and pursued coming to earth, a confused mass of feathers and wings.
It must have been a battle-royal indeed up there in the skies, far beyond human
ken, and I would have given a good deal to have seen the final stoop. Falcon
and kite I took up some two miles from where we started.
Very good sport may be had with the "Lugger" at crows, partridges, and
paddy birds ; but this falcon is not often used by the Indian falconer in India, as
it cannot compare for beauty, speed, or courage to any of those I have mentioned
previously.
These "Desert Falcons," viz., the "Cherrug," and the "Lugger," are, as I
have mentioned elsewhere, not so highly prized as the true falcons, such as the
Peregrine and Shahin, on account of their propensity in a wild state for catching
insects. This instinct can, however, be conquered by training, with the result, as I
have shown, of excellent sport being derived from them. They require far more
work and physicking than the true falcons, and in fact, without occasional doses
of physick, would, I believe, be useless to the falconer. The natives are very
cunning in their concoction of drugs, and of these they have several kinds
—one of the commonest being "goli naushadar" (sal ammoniac), and another,
a blackish compound, smelling much like liquorice. This is the famous
"momei" of native falconers, a medicine not altogether unknown to English
falconers of former days under the name of "Mummy." I well remember
one evening, after the Cherrug had been behaving badly, that old Wazir
Khan appeared before me shoeless, clad in spotless white, and, salaaming
down to the ground, approached me humbly, with a request for two days'
leave. "Why?" "Oh, Protector of the Poor and lord of many men, thy
Cherrugs do not fly well; and I, thy head falconer, who am but as the dust