Birds of Prey at Warwick Castle

A couple of weeks ago we were at Warwick Castle with my family, and saw a brilliant display by some birds of prey:

The show started with this Verreaux's Eagle Owl (if I have the name right...) zooming in from the woods to land on the handler's arm:

After the owl had done its stuff, a Bald Eagle came out ot play, and put on a great show by flying between the handler near the audience and another one up on the battlements of the castle:

Finally, we had a Steller's Sea Eagle, which is the heaviest eagle in the world:

Check out the size of the bird's feet! Its toes are almost as thick as the handlers' fingers!

There's also lots of peacocks roaming around - I guess they are too big for the eagles to tackle, though earlier in the day we did see one of the display birds having a go at catching a duck!

Finally, one non-bird-related photo - we also saw this huge trebucet fire a flaming ball across the field!

Oh, and there was a castle to explore too, of course!

Mike

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Rare Breeds Centre

Last week, when we had our friends visiting, we took the kids (Kezziah, Karis and Callum) to the Rare Breeds Centre, near Ashford. I think the highlight for me was the birds of prey, such as this Eagle Owl:When the smaller birds were out, they invited spectators to join in, Karis had this owl come nad land on her:
And she successfully launched it back into the air again:
My turn came with an American Harris Hawk though:
There was lots of other stuff there too, including animal pens you could go into for a closer encounter:
and various other farmyard creatures:
I was particularly impressed by the size of this boar:
There were a few exotics there too:
and away from the animals there was stuff like trailer rides:
and an assult course in the woods:
All in all a great day out, and I'd strongly recommend it, especially for kids.

Mike

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