Woke up at the crack of dawn (5:30 am) on Saturday to go to the Falconry exhibit put on by some of the naturalists working at the Al Maha Resort. The Bedouins have been using bird of prey for centuries to hunt for food. Requires a lot of training to get the falcons to just kill the birds and not eat them. The naturalists gave us a demonstration of the training with 4 different birds -- 3 of them were peregrine falcons and 1 was a tawny eagle (pictured). It can take them months to train a new bird. They currently have 10 birds on the resort -- and they lose about 1 a year (the birds can just take off if they want to -- they are imbedded with tracking devices, but only good for about 40 kms). All together very interesting -- well worth getting up so early!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Falconry - Al Maha Resort
Woke up at the crack of dawn (5:30 am) on Saturday to go to the Falconry exhibit put on by some of the naturalists working at the Al Maha Resort. The Bedouins have been using bird of prey for centuries to hunt for food. Requires a lot of training to get the falcons to just kill the birds and not eat them. The naturalists gave us a demonstration of the training with 4 different birds -- 3 of them were peregrine falcons and 1 was a tawny eagle (pictured). It can take them months to train a new bird. They currently have 10 birds on the resort -- and they lose about 1 a year (the birds can just take off if they want to -- they are imbedded with tracking devices, but only good for about 40 kms). All together very interesting -- well worth getting up so early!
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