Burren Birds of Prey - Hawk Walk

This was something we'd been looking forward to doing since I first found out about it. We arrived at the Center and checked in for our 1:00 Hawk Walk. Since we were a little early, we went and watched the flying demonstration. They fly a series of different types of birds of prey and talk about them, then let audience members come up to take a turn holding them. Very informative, and the bird handlers obviously love what they do. Finally, it was time for our Hawk Walk! We were teamed with a bird trainer named Jamie, who couldn't have been nicer, he was just great and had the Irish humor we've really come to love. We each got our very own Harris Hawk to handle! They use Harris Hawks because these are the only hawks that hunt in groups, so they don't mind flying together. We geared up in our leather gloves, holding our hawks' jesses (leather straps that you hold onto). First stop was to weigh the hawks, to check their health and to make sure their weight was good for flying. My hawk, Juan, had sustained a wing injury and was rehabilitating. Because he had been taken out of the hawk group's aviary to heal, he had lost his place in the pecking order and needed to re-establish his relation with his brother Al whom Mike was handling. After some instruction, we took off into the woods together. Jamie let the jesses off, and we were able to launch our birds for the first time...Awesome!!! We spent an hour sending them off and calling them back to land on our gloves, it was really something special to look right into the eyes of those birds as they sit on your hand, they even let you stroke them - absolutely beautiful. They have terrific maneuvering ability as well, able to fly through small openings in the trees in pursuit of prey. We saw Al fly through a space of about 14 inches to come in for a landing on the glove. It was just a fantastic time and it was probable our most favorite thing we did in Ireland.