Saqr, Portrait Studies of the Hunting Falcon

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Saqr (صقر) is an Arabic word which means falcon. It was the word that the Saker falcon originally derived its name. 

"Trained hawks have a peculiar ability to conjure history because they are in a sense immortal ... the birds we fly today are identical to those of five thousand years ago. Civilisations rise and fall, but the hawks stay the same. Falconry birds feel like relics from the past. You take a hawk onto your fist. You imagine the falconer of the past doing the same thing. It is hard not to feel it is the same bird." Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk.