Vacation part 12: Falconry in the Royal Armoury

The Royal Armoury isn't just a museum where you can see all kinds of items. They perform a lot of events each day and one of them is a show with birds of prey. The guy on the first picture shows the audience what the birds can do. He also advised us not to eat during the show, because the birds might want to take the breakfast from us. The birds were literally flying over our heads, often at a distance of half a meter or less. It was extraordinary!

I was not able to take any good pictures of the first bird, but there were three others and the pictures worked great. This is the owl that was flying over us many times, when the guy asked the bird to fly back and forth between two pieces of railing that we were sitting close to.

Next bird that the guy showed us was the eagle. I believe it was an eagle. The eagle easily caught a stuffed animal that was moving very fast on the ground

The last bird that we saw was a falcon. Again, I think it was a falcon. The guy let him fly away to a building in neighbourhood and then just called him - and the bird came back.

The falcon then caught a bait that the guy was swirling in the air at a high speed.

And because the bird was very good, he was awarded an excellent lunch with a lot of meat.

Copyright notice: Text and images copyright by Michal Řeháček and Nicole.