[The description of the Bearded Vulture[112] as given by the author is sufficiently accurate for identification. He, however, adorns it with “two horns or ears like those of the horned owls.” He then continues:]—
The Lammergeyer is noted for its wondrous powers of flight. It soars aloft, bearing with ease a bone as large as the bleached thigh-bone of a donkey. This it drops on a rock, and then descends to eat the shattered fragments.[113] The Poet has said of it:—
Popular Superstition.—It is a popular superstition that any one wilfully slaying a Lammergeyer will meet his death within forty days. Once, when out hawking, I saw one of these fateful birds seated on a stone a short distance from me. With me was a servant, a sturdy villain fearing nothing. Gun in hand he approached the Lammergeyer, bent on slaughter. Do all I could, I failed to dissuade him. I told him the popular superstition, but he laughed and said, “Oh! that’s an old woman’s story.” Heedless of my advice he shot the Lammergeyer, and died himself on the fortieth day. This is a fact: I myself was an eye-witness. Was his death a mere coincidence, or is there truth in the vulgar belief? God knows.
Taking a Lammergeyer with a Chark͟h.—I was once hawking in Sulaymānīya Shahrzūr[115] and saw what I took to be an eagle,[116] seated on a stone some little way off. I had with me a very fine chark͟h[117] trained to eagles.[118] To unhood and cast it off was the work of a moment, and it was not till I had actually secured the quarry, that I discovered it was no eagle but a Lammergeyer. I recollected the fate of my servant, and hastily released it. [By a play on the words humā and humāyūn, the author here pays the Shāh a flowery and far-fetched compliment, difficult to render in English. He pretends that the popular belief mentioned in the first note on the previous page was certainly fulfilled in his case, since the King of Kings had always distinguished him by his especial friendship and bounty, and thus raised him to the dignity of ordinary kingship. He adds:]—
[112] Humā; the Lammergeyer, Bearded Vulture, or Ossifrage. Translators, imagining the Humā to be a fabulous creature, have identified it with the Phœnix. It was a popular Persian superstition that the shadow of a Humā falling on a person’s head predicted his rise to sovereignty. The adjective (and proper name) humāyūn, signifying “august,” “fortunate,” and “royal,” is derived from this bird. In the Panjab, the Lammergeyer, common as it is, seems to have no special native name.
[113] It is well-known that the Lammergeyer does not confine itself to dry bones. I once saw one shot in the Tochi valley over a dead fowl laid out as a bait. When shot it was carrying off the fowl in its beak and not in its feet. The most contradictory statements exist regarding its habits. As it sweeps round the hill side, the fowls in the compounds show no alarm and will let it pass within a very few yards of them. At Kingri, in Baluchistan, I saw one stoop at a flock of chukor and sent a sowar to the spot to see what had happened: the man returned with a chukor, unbroken and still warm. Some years ago at Sheikh-budin, the hill station near Dera Ismail Khan, I saw one stoop repeatedly at a mārk͟hor kid, on a narrow ledge on the cliff-face below me. At each stoop the plucky mother lowered her horns to the “charge,” and effectually repulsed the attacks of the assailant. Whether the Lammergeyer was really trying to brush the kid off the cliff, with intent to feed on its mangled remains, or whether it was merely animated by that spirit of mischief that enters into birds as well as beasts, I cannot say. The Pathan shikārīs with me stated that they knew from experience that the former was the case. A shot Lammergeyer shown to a tame monkey will drive it into a paroxysm of terror. Can it be that the latter recognizes in it a natural enemy, or does it mistake it for an eagle?
[114] Saʿdī: Gulistan, Chap. I, St. 3.
[115] In Kurdistān, and a little over a hundred miles south of Lake Urūmiah.
[116] ʿUqāb. The author uses this word as a generic term. By falconers of certain parts of the Panjab the name is specially applied to the Tawny Eagle.
[117] The author applies the name chark͟h only to nestlings of the Saker Falcon: passage falcons he calls bālābān. In the Panjab, and in Kabul, the species is termed respectively charg͟h and chark͟h, the word bālābān being unknown except to a travelled few.
[118] Qara-qūsh. Any eagle, but specially the golden eagle. For a description of this “flight” see pages 113-114.