Today was birthday experience time again and this month my treat was a day spent at a falconry centre flying birds of prey. It was situated in the beautiful grounds of Dalhousie Hotel - a lovely little Scottish castle, and as you can see we had a beautiful sunny day for it...
We were met at the centre, first of all by an array of birds of prey sitting on perches. Owls, falcons, buzzards, eagles and crows. Here are a couple of my favourites...
Ruby the kestrel...
...and one of the 'little owls' - they were so tiny and so sweet!
We were then met by the falconer - whose name I can't remember! But she was incredibly knowledgeable and for the next few hours told us so many facts about birds of prey. She gave us our gauntlets and then gave us a tour of all the different birds at the centre.
The first bird we flew was a Harris Hawk called 'Brennan'. We went for a walk around the grounds of the castle and took it in turns to hold out our gloved left hands onto which our falconer would place a little piece of 'chick' and Brennan would swoop down onto our hand to eat, here he is swooping down to my arm to be fed...
After the hawk walk, we flew 'Dolly' the buzzard. Yes - that's a chick's foot on my hand that 'Dolly' is swooping down to eat...
Both the hawk and the buzzard amazed us because they were so light. You hardly felt them landing on your arm! The Eagle Owl was a lot heavier though...
Here he is getting to know Jonathan a little better...
After our Eagle owl flight, we had a break and it was lunchtime for one of their little owls who was very old with no sense of balance and arthritis, he hobbled around and was very sweet.
Watching the day old chicks being cut up with scissors for his lunch was not quite as sweet!
It was then time to fly the Merlin - the smallest bird we flew. Here he is on my hand just before he flew up to the trees...
...but he returned to the lure and was then rewarded with a mouse...
The final flight of the day was with Norris, an African crow who normally looks like a magpie, with a white back and chest. But he had recently done some filming for a tv series and had been coloured totally black. he was very friendly! This picture of him with Jonathan is one of my favourites of the day...
As you can imagine these are just some of the picture highlights, we took well over 200 photos in total and I'm looking forward to a few bird themed Layouts over the next few weeks!
The experience of having a bird of prey land on your arm was amazing and we were privileged to fly a great variety of birds and to learn so much about them. The location, weather and company were all excellent and I would definitely give my September experience 10/10 - maybe with an additional point for some of the excellent photos which Jonathan took (& some of mine weren't bad either!)
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