# General > Birdwatching >  Festival of Falconry

## Ricco

Today was Britain's first Festival and I just had to go along. Fantastic day out; birds and falconers from all over the world; lovely setting. Here are just a small number of pictures from the day.


One of the Kazakstan dwellings.


A group from Kazakstan.

----------


## Ricco

A study of care and concern.


Two children with a Merlin.

----------


## Ricco



----------


## karia

Hi Ricco,

Lovely pics! 

Thanks for sharing such noble & splendid creatures with us.

Must confess, don't like the current trend of ' exhibiting' such lovely creatures in shopping malls, educational..? maybe!  all wrong none the less! :: 

thanks again,

Karia

----------


## Ricco

> Hi Ricco,
> 
> Lovely pics! 
> 
> Thanks for sharing such noble & splendid creatures with us.
> 
> Must confess, don't like the current trend of ' exhibiting' such lovely creatures in shopping malls, educational..? maybe! all wrong none the less!
> 
> thanks again,
> ...


You must be kidding! Where on earth (or perhaps off it) does that bit of lunacy take place?  ::

----------


## karia

Hi Ricco,

Sadly it is a weekly 'feature' in shopping centres all over Scotland!

The birds look 'unnerved' at best outside of M&S or Debenhams.

It makes me feel quite ashamed actually, even just passing by!

Karia

----------


## Ricco

> Hi Ricco,
> 
> Sadly it is a weekly 'feature' in shopping centres all over Scotland!
> 
> The birds look 'unnerved' at best outside of M&S or Debenhams.
> 
> It makes me feel quite ashamed actually, even just passing by!
> 
> Karia


Someone should mention this to the RSPB, or its Scottish equivalent.  There are also several Scottish Falconry clubs that would not be in favour of it.

----------


## laguna2

> You must be kidding! Where on earth (or perhaps off it) does that bit of lunacy take place?


I have seen them in Inverness!

----------


## karia

> Someone should mention this to the RSPB, or its Scottish equivalent.  There are also several Scottish Falconry clubs that would not be in favour of it.


Totally agree, but I'ts a falconry assoc. of some sort that's doing it! With literature and advertising boards.

Kids being encouraged to 'approach' the birds!

Have seen it in Falkirk, where I live, Stirling, Glasgow, Edinburgh & Perth.

I usually pass through real quick as I can't take the look on the bird's face,..
..resigned to its fate. :: 

I've been so lucky and have seen sparrow hawks, kestrels,..all manner of wonderful raptors, as they should be,..in the wild..not outside of 'Next'.

karia

----------


## laguna2

The ones in Inverness are "rescued" birds.  However, I do not like to see them having to put up with the indignity of folk gawking at them.  I usually walk by as quickly as I can.

----------


## Kenn

Am I right in thinking that is a Gyrfalcon she has on her glove?

----------


## Ricco

> Am I right in thinking that is a Gyrfalcon she has on her glove?


It may well be but there were so many hybrids that I was losing track of which was what.  :Wink:

----------


## Lolabelle

> Am I right in thinking that is a Gyrfalcon she has on her glove?


Whatever type of bird it is, it's beautiful.

----------


## Rheghead

> Someone should mention this to the RSPB, or its Scottish equivalent.  There are also several Scottish Falconry clubs that would not be in favour of it.


Does it make any iota of difference to the cruelty to the bird if it is paraded outside Debenhams, at a festival of falconry or just walking around the countryside?

Falconry is probably at the lower end of animal cruelty but it is still a kept bird and all that egg stealing and seedy sales to arab business men just makes added profits to an already unsavory activity.

Just my 2p, but these birds really should be in the wild and fending for themselves.

----------


## Ricco

> Does it make any iota of difference to the cruelty to the bird if it is paraded outside Debenhams, at a festival of falconry or just walking around the countryside?


Well, Rheghead there are degrees of cruelty but I can see where you are coming from. Of course, the same applies to dogs, cats and other 'pets'.




> Falconry is probably at the lower end of animal cruelty but it is still a kept bird and all that egg stealing and seedy sales to arab business men just makes added profits to an already unsavory activity.


I wasn't aware that this practise still continued, though it was widespread some years ago. Most birds are now bred for the trade - the concept of passerines as long gone.




> Just my 2p, but these birds really should be in the wild and fending for themselves.


And to which you are totally entitled. However, falconry schools and events to raise the public awareness and the profile of these magnificent birds and (hopefully) ensure their long-term existance in the wild. I find great joy in the increasing numbers and range of buzzards and red kites. I am worried about the plight of our owl species and an improved awareness may bring about focussed efforts on improving their lot.

I still think there is a whole world of difference between flying a falcon or hawk in the field to parading it around a concrete jungle full of clamouring, bag-laden (no, not bin-laden  :Wink: ) people.

----------


## Rheghead

> Well, Rheghead there are degrees of cruelty but I can see where you are coming from. Of course, the same applies to dogs, cats and other 'pets'.


I've had a long think about that and though superficially you seem to be right, I am not so sure(for my part anyway  :Smile: ).

Cats and dogs have been captive bred for centuries into definite species that have been tailored to suit mankind's lifestyle and fashion needs.

Now that we have the technology to captive breed birds of prey, the temptation will be all too great to do the same.  We will then have breeds of BoP to do certain tasks in the future, we may already have them, dunno. 

The added risk to all this is if these birds are released or escape to the wild and they breed with truly wild birds thus making a race of breed hybrids thus making a wild species effectively extinct.  

We already have had captive BoPs escaping in Caithness and we have wild buzzards etc.

The model that I am coming from is the captive breeding of the racing pigeon, it resembles little from its ancient past but it has survived in the wild and it has bred with the wild rock dove, to such an extent that the true rock dove is now almost extinct in the UK apart from (incidentally) the north coast of Scotland.

Just something to think about. ::

----------


## karia

Hi Rheghead,

Thank you, your posts on this have made me consider my opinion.

I am not comfortable with 'captive Birds' in any way.

My objection to the 'displaying' of Falcons etc in shopping malls is especially heightened because of their indoor nature. 

Birds should never experience ceilings or overhead constraints.

It's simply wrong!

I will give your other points serious thought, and thank you for raising them.

Karia

----------


## porshiepoo

Rheghead says:



> We already have had captive BoPs escaping in Caithness and we have wild buzzards etc.



 ::  Couldn't let that one miss the opportunity eh?

What we'll do then Rheghead just to appease yourself - sod the wellbeing of the birds - is to release all the captive birds regardless of their individual needs and problems and hope for the best! Does that suit you???
What the heck, nature will take it's course and whatever survives is just darn lucky and whatever doesn't is ..... well, dead!

We have never bred any kind of BOP but as alot of you know, my husband and daughters do have rescue ones. A couple of them were even re-released by the rescue centres  hoping that they could manage to survive, however they were soon bought back  in a worse state.
We also have a buzzard that only has one wing due to an RTA and one that has severe plummage problems due to being kept in a tiny cage with barbed wire. Should we simply chuck these birds back out and hope for the best??
Could you seriously do it Rheghead? Could you walk by an injured animal and say 'Let nature take it's course?'.

I don't agree with birds that are just paraded for parading sake but if injured, captive birds can help with the education of the public as their plight and diminish some of the ridiculous horror stories, is this such a bad thing?
Believe it or not, some captive birds actually don't mind humans holding them or 'gawping' at them and as long as people are made aware that they need to keep voices down and arm flapping to a minimum, there actually isn't any harm done. It at least gives the birds captivity some sort of a meaning.

I personally do not like to see caged BOP and my family are fully aware of this opinion and are in full support of it. I would much rather see such gorgeous birds flying free as nature initially intended, however I am not so stubborn that I cannot appreciate the fact that for our birds, and many other captive birds, this is simply not an option.

----------


## minni85

I would just like to say it is my dad who has the birds in inverness main street not in the shopping centre. The birds he has rescued always get released where they came from if they are fit to go back into the wild. He does have some that were so badly injured they would not survive in the wild.  for example one of the birds he has got is a tawny owl which kids in nairn found as a chick and used it as a foot ball and took out 1 of his eyes with a pen knife so the SSPCA took the bird into us and said it would have to stay as how could it possibly hunt with 1 eye? now dad shows some of his birds to people so that they can see how nice they are and make people aware of the things that some people do. The birds he shows love getting attention. My 4 year old son holds them and we have 1 that we got as a chick that protects my little sis who was a baby when it came to us. As for it being crule we got in a buzzard that was shot in its wing we spent about 2 month helping it and took it back to where it originaly came from and let him go and he had a small fly arround then landed by our feet. we tried with him many times and he would not go. so in his best interest we had to keep him as if he seen someone walking and flew to them they would panic and the bird would have ended up getting hurt because people deo not know how to care for birds. also many people spot a chick and think ohhh poor thing then pick it up and hand it into a rescue did you no that the mother will come looking for her chick and take it back to the nest but people pick them up dad gets them at the rescue they have to be hand fed then become to tame to go back to the wild. Those birds probably treated better than most peoples dogs and casts and I trust them more than i do peoples dogs in the street. I would just like to say it helps to have a little knowledge before making coments about how crule it is. Birds in the wild have to catch their own food in the winter how many rabbits and stuff do you see my dads get fed every day and are in the garden they all have the choice to go into shelter or outside and he flies them every day. If you would like to know more about the birds feel free to pm me and I will hapily tell you about them.

----------


## porshiepoo

> I would just like to say it is my dad who has the birds in inverness main street not in the shopping centre. The birds he has rescued always get released where they came from if they are fit to go back into the wild. He does have some that were so badly injured they would not survive in the wild.  for example one of the birds he has got is a tawny owl which kids in nairn found as a chick and used it as a foot ball and took out 1 of his eyes with a pen knife so the SSPCA took the bird into us and said it would have to stay as how could it possibly hunt with 1 eye? now dad shows some of his birds to people so that they can see how nice they are and make people aware of the things that some people do. The birds he shows love getting attention. My 4 year old son holds them and we have 1 that we got as a chick that protects my little sis who was a baby when it came to us. As for it being crule we got in a buzzard that was shot in its wing we spent about 2 month helping it and took it back to where it originaly came from and let him go and he had a small fly arround then landed by our feet. we tried with him many times and he would not go. so in his best interest we had to keep him as if he seen someone walking and flew to them they would panic and the bird would have ended up getting hurt because people deo not know how to care for birds. also many people spot a chick and think ohhh poor thing then pick it up and hand it into a rescue did you no that the mother will come looking for her chick and take it back to the nest but people pick them up dad gets them at the rescue they have to be hand fed then become to tame to go back to the wild. Those birds probably treated better than most peoples dogs and casts and I trust them more than i do peoples dogs in the street. I would just like to say it helps to have a little knowledge before making coments about how crule it is. Birds in the wild have to catch their own food in the winter how many rabbits and stuff do you see my dads get fed every day and are in the garden they all have the choice to go into shelter or outside and he flies them every day. If you would like to know more about the birds feel free to pm me and I will hapily tell you about them.


Hear hear!

There are many on here that have very focused black or white opinions on captive birds of prey. While I don't particularly like to see birds of prey in aviaries, the rescue ones do have to have somewhere to go with knowledgable people.
I'm sure certain people here - such as Rheghead - assume that people who keep these rescue birds do so for some kind of 'profile' or to 'show off'. Nothing could be more from the truth. These birds take alot of looking after, they don't just sit in an aviary all day flying back and forth looking sad.
Our birds are taken out almost every day whether they can fly or not, my husband and kids are constantly thinking up new games so that the birds can at least hunt for their food in the aviaries.

Yes, it may have been easier to have them PTS, but I feel that that would be even more of a shame. These birds can be given a purpose in their captivity, they can teach so much and give people the chance to see birds that would otherwise be unavailable.

The human that loses a leg in an RTA or the such like isn't shoved into the middle of the road and given the old speech 'Let nature take it's course', it doesn't make them any less a human being. They might not be able to run or skip without aid anymore but we would all help any family member to make the most of the loss of a limb, or an illness that has prevented life from functioning as we feel it should.
Just because we 'can' put an animal to sleep doesn't necessarily mean we 'should'.

----------


## minni85

I totaly agree.

And like someone said at one point dogs were not kept in captivity and that is considered normal now. And Im sure people would agree dogs are better off now than they were hundreds of years ago.

Just because you see something in captivity that you do not often see does not mean its crule.

----------


## Rheghead

> Could you walk by an injured animal and say 'Let nature take it's course?'.


I always take the wildlife reporter's view on these things, ie, leave well alone, it is the kindest thing, an injured bird will always be eaten by maggots which in turn will provide a meal for a higher order of animal, ad infinitum.  Nature will always bite you back harder for fighting against it.  An injured animal that is taken in by a human on 'humanitarian terms' will have an astronomical carbon footprint.  We are supposed to be living in harmony with nature....

----------


## minni85

> I always take the wildlife reporter's view on these things, ie, leave well alone, it is the kindest thing, an injured bird will always be eaten by maggots which in turn will provide a meal for a higher order of animal, ad infinitum. Nature will always bite you back harder for fighting against it. An injured animal that is taken in by a human on 'humanitarian terms' will have an astronomical carbon footprint. We are supposed to be living in harmony with nature....


 
If you have a pet how would you feel if someone seen it lying dying somewhere and thought well it was ment to be and walked off!!!

If a human fell and broke a leg for example are we suppose to leave them to die. In my mind human and animals no mater what type of animal have the right to live and if i can help a sick animal or human i would. Would you not?

----------


## Rheghead

> If you have a pet how would you feel if someone seen it lying dying somewhere and thought well it was ment to be and walked off!!!
> 
> If a human fell and broke a leg for example are we suppose to leave them to die. In my mind human and animals no mater what type of animal have the right to live and if i can help a sick animal or human i would. Would you not?


It is a case of 'duty of care'.  Pets are by definition, domesticated animals.  We have a duty of care over them, they are not wild  They are bred for mankind's purpose.  BoP are not.  They are wildbirds, not breeds of birds.

I wouldn't try to help a wild animal, I learned that from trying to.

----------


## porshiepoo

This subject could be argued till the end of days and perhaps that's as it should be. Everyone has and is entitled to their own opinion on the matter, each one right in their own views.

I do understand part of Rhegheads theory regarding BOP, I really do hate to see them in aviaries, however, I can also see the bigger picture. 
These animals that are now in captivity can help to educate and raise the profile of BOP and in the long term maybe that can help to reduce the amount of uneccessary trappings and killings due to uneducated peoples belief as to what these animals do and don't do. Maybe the general public will be educated more about what is and isn't acceptable for these birds and will be less likely to turn a 'blind eye' and less likely to see them as vermin (yes, people actually do). And maybe, just maybe, making these birds more accessible will help in some small way to reduce the amount of stolen eggs from the wild? Yes, people will probably always do this due to the money that is involved in some species but if it helps to educate people into even a 10% drop in these kind of thefts then surely it has to be of benefit to the wild population? After all, theft and trapping / poisoning etc is hardly nature is it!

----------

