Along the Bārān people take masses of cranes (_tūrna_) with the cord; masses of _aūqār_, _qarqara_ and _qūṯān_ also.[857] This method of bird-catching is unique. They twist a cord as long as the arrow's[858] flight, tie the arrow at one end and a _bīldūrga_[859] at the other, and wind it up, from the arrow-end, on a piece of wood, span-long and wrist-thick, right up to the _bīldūrga_. They [Sidenote: Fol. 142b.] then pull out the piece of wood, leaving just the hole it was in. The _bīldūrga_ being held fast in the hand, the arrow is shot off[860] towards the coming flock. If the cord twists round a neck or wing, it brings the bird down. On the Bārān everyone takes birds in this way; it is difficult; it must be done on rainy nights, because on such nights the birds do not alight, but fly continually and fly low till dawn, in fear of ravening beasts of prey. Through the night the flowing river is their road, its moving water showing through the dark; then it is, while they come and go, up and down the river, that the cord is shot. One night I shot it; it broke in drawing in; both bird and cord were brought in to me next day. By this device Bārān people catch the many herons from which they take the turban-aigrettes sent from Kābul for sale in Khurāsān. Of bird-catchers there is also the band of slave-fowlers, two or three hundred households, whom some descendant of Tīmūr Beg made migrate from near Multān to the Bārān.[861] Bird-catching [Sidenote: Fol. 143.] is their trade; they dig tanks, set decoy-birds[862] on them, put a net over the middle, and in this way take all sorts of birds. Not fowlers only catch birds, but every dweller on the Bārān does it, whether by shooting the cord, setting the springe, or in various other ways. (_k. Fishing._) The fish of the Bārān migrate at the same seasons as birds. At those times many are netted, and many are taken on wattles (_chīgh_) fixed in the water. In autumn when the plant known as _wild-ass-tail_[863] has come to maturity, flowered and seeded, people take 10-20 loads (of seed?) and 20-30 of green branches (_gūk-shībāk_) to some head of water, break it up small and cast it in. Then going into the water, they can at once pick up drugged fish. At some convenient place lower down, in a hole below a fall, they will have fixed beforehand a wattle of finger-thick willow-withes, making it firm by piling stones on its sides. The water goes rushing and dashing through the wattle, but leaves on it any fish that may have come floating down. This way of catching fish is practised in Gul-bahār, Parwān and Istālīf.