Falcons are a big deal in Abu Dhabi. For the most part, we've been content with the cheesy paintings of falcons displayed prominently in fancy hotels and available for sale in every souq. For the last month or two, there has been a "Birds of Prey" exhibit in our building's atrium. The exhibit lies between us and our main source of sustenance (long live Waitrose!), and on several shopping trips, we've run into some real falcons, brought by their owners to the exhibit of representations of falcons. Deep.
That was one of our first tastes of real falcons, but - now that we've been to the falcon hospital - we are old hands.
The falcon hospital is located off the island, on a somewhat harrowing stretch of E11, the road to Dubai. We took Nick's dad and sister on the two-hour tour to begin our Thanksgiving festivities.
Though we learned a lot of falcon-facts (for example, the females are larger and better at hunting, so most people own female falcons), what we'll remember is the room FULL of falcons, where falcons wait pre- and post-op. At tens of thousands of dollars a head, falcons are expensive (the most expensive we saw was beautiful, with tiny black spots on a lovely white background, worth about fifty thousand dollars). So the room was full of some very precious merchandise.
Welcome to the world's poshest falcon waiting room.
Each falcon has a fancy top hat on to keep it calm. Some falcons were not so easily swayed, however. This fellow flapped his wings for most of our visit.
Others were more easily convinced (and more beautiful - below is our favorite falcon).
Operations were going on throughout our visit. Anesthetized birds are a sad sight to behold: their necks droop impossibly, so impossibly that they look broken. Operations can be simple; for example, birds in captivity need their talons trimmed so that they don't hurt themselves with over-long claws, and their feathers need yearly help, too.
But falcon treatment can also be more complex - we saw a real, hard-core operating theater (no birds therein) and a post-mortem assessment room.
After a few minutes of stunned watching and listening, as the doctors (?) explained the basics of falcon care, we each held a falcon....
And Margaret got to feed one. He snapped through a whole baby quail in about thirty seconds, bones and all!
And we went home to our mezze Thanksgiving....
....where there was kibbeh and pumpkin oumali (the aptly named queen of puddings)....
...but no birds to be seen, save for this little guy, a Kazhia Kolb original...he flew in specially from the US for the occasion!
That was one of our first tastes of real falcons, but - now that we've been to the falcon hospital - we are old hands.
The falcon hospital is located off the island, on a somewhat harrowing stretch of E11, the road to Dubai. We took Nick's dad and sister on the two-hour tour to begin our Thanksgiving festivities.
Though we learned a lot of falcon-facts (for example, the females are larger and better at hunting, so most people own female falcons), what we'll remember is the room FULL of falcons, where falcons wait pre- and post-op. At tens of thousands of dollars a head, falcons are expensive (the most expensive we saw was beautiful, with tiny black spots on a lovely white background, worth about fifty thousand dollars). So the room was full of some very precious merchandise.
Welcome to the world's poshest falcon waiting room.
Each falcon has a fancy top hat on to keep it calm. Some falcons were not so easily swayed, however. This fellow flapped his wings for most of our visit.
Others were more easily convinced (and more beautiful - below is our favorite falcon).
Operations were going on throughout our visit. Anesthetized birds are a sad sight to behold: their necks droop impossibly, so impossibly that they look broken. Operations can be simple; for example, birds in captivity need their talons trimmed so that they don't hurt themselves with over-long claws, and their feathers need yearly help, too.
But falcon treatment can also be more complex - we saw a real, hard-core operating theater (no birds therein) and a post-mortem assessment room.
After a few minutes of stunned watching and listening, as the doctors (?) explained the basics of falcon care, we each held a falcon....
And Margaret got to feed one. He snapped through a whole baby quail in about thirty seconds, bones and all!
And we went home to our mezze Thanksgiving....
....where there was kibbeh and pumpkin oumali (the aptly named queen of puddings)....
...but no birds to be seen, save for this little guy, a Kazhia Kolb original...he flew in specially from the US for the occasion!
No comments:
Post a Comment