Harris Hawk Flying over Our Faces

We live in West End, have two young children, and had no plans for the early May bank holiday. When I read about the Fryern Funtasia in Chandler’s Ford it sounded ideal; not too far away, lots for the girls to do and some falconry as well which I’m always interested to see.

As it happened the conditions weren’t ideal for Falcon High to get the best out of their birds; a smallish arena, lots of background noise and dogs to distract the birds. However they had some interesting ways to get the crowd involved, including a series of passes close to and low over people standing in the arena and lying on the ground.

I got involved in the morning and afternoon displays, and the African Eagle Owl wouldn’t play ball on either occasion, but fortunately their Harris Hawk was much more obliging.

During the afternoon display I was lying on the ground after it had flown just over our faces once, and saw that the man next to me had his phone out trying to get a picture. As I’m very poor at taking pictures of moving objects on my iPhone I didn’t really expect to get anything, and I couldn’t see anything on the screen, so just pointed it in the right direction, hit the shutter at what seemed like the right time, and bingo!

Note: See more images about Fryern Funtasia: Fryern Funtasia 5th May 2014 Gallery