Nimue, Puck and Navajo

As I mentioned in the previous post on falconry we had organised two separate sessions while staying at Dalhousie Castle. The second session was all about owls.

We had already flown Bandit the day before and now we got to fly three more owls. The first of which was Nimue, a Mexican Striped Owl.

Nimue was great fun to fly. Not only did he come to the glove without too much coaxing but he was also quite chatty and entertaining. Although as you can tell from the middle picture he clearly likes his food (bits of day old cockerel chicks).

The second owl was Puck, a Little Owl. Now I've seen Little Owls before but only from quite a distance, never this close.

Unfortunately Puck didn't like me at all. He would fly to Bryony's glove without any problems but he wouldn't fly to mine. And he wouldn't even sit on my hand when placed there, he just shrieked loudly and flew off. He was quite happy to let me stroke him when he was one someone else's glove though so I don't really know what the problem was. Anyway, I thought it worth mentioning the strange feather patterning on the back of a Little Owls head. Basically he has the same pattern on the back of his head as he does on the front (the white V like pattern above the eyes) so that from a distance predators can't tell if they are looking at the front or back of his head -- he literally appears to have "eyes in the back of his head". It wasn't so obvious when looking at him close to, but when looking through the view finder of the camera I couldn't work out which way he was facing.

The final owl we got to fly was a Great Grey Owl called Navajo.

Navajo was by far the biggest bird we flew on either day, both in terms of size and weight. While most of him is just feathers he is still a very heavy bird. He also likes his food -- in fact the only way to entice him to fly to the glove was with whole chicks instead of just little bits!

Dolly, Bandit, Jura and Brenin

Both of us have wanted to try our hand at falconry for quite some time. So when we saw that Dalhousie Castle had a falconry centre within the grounds we jumped at the chance, booking two different sessions so we could experience as wide a range of the birds as possible. The first session we had was billed as "The Ultimate Falconry Experience" and is designed to allow you to experience as many of the birds as possible.

We started the session by flying Dolly. Dolly is a Buzzard, the same as you may see flying in the sky across many parts of the UK.

Dolly looked huge, especially when she was flying towards your glove. She was, however, exceptionally light. We were both a bit worried about holding a large heavy bird for too long on our wrists but it really is a shock to find out just how light they really are.

After Dolly we flew Bandit who is a New Zealand BooBook Owl. Given that Bandit is an owl he flies and sits very much like a hawk.

Bandit was definitely our favourite bird to fly, although some of the birds that couldn't be flown (some were mating and some malting) may well have challenged for our affections.

After Bandit, we had a demonstration of Jura, a female kestrel, flying to a lure. Bryony actually got to hold Jura while we walked to the area and the falconer started to spin the lure. To look at close too Jura was one of the best birds. All the more interesting as we see kestrels so often but never close enough to really appreciate their fantastic colouring.

After Jura, we moved onto the last bird of the session; Brenin a Harris' Hawk. Don't get me wrong flying Brenin was really good fun, but he just wasn't quite as engaging as any of the other birds. That and the fact that he tried to take your head off every time he jumped from the glove and his propensity to throw dead chicken down the front of your t-shirt didn't really help.

All in all a very enjoyable morning and something that if you haven't tried before you really should.