The Flying Team

During the course of the whole year about 60 individual birds will be flown for demonstration or on training courses.

Each bird works approximately nine months of the year and then is rested and put loose in moulting enclosures to have a break and a much needed moult. All birds moult every year and, to keep them in good flying trim and looking beautiful, it is important to give them this opportunity. We have a continuing rolling programme, where some birds are just starting work, some in the middle of their season, some just finishing.

We try to fly the birds at the time of year that suits them best. We tend to fly the smaller birds during the warmer weather as they are more vulnerable to cold. On the other hand the snowy owls for example much prefer the colder weather. As not all the birds are flown all year, if there is a specific species you wish to see, contact us first and we should be able to let you know when it is flying.

For a slideshow and more information about the flying team, click here

Those birds who join the flying team are given names. This is important as we need to identify each individual bird, and we believe that the birds are a part of the staff and therefore deserve to be treated as such, and that includes names. Each year we choose a theme for the names. Each member of staff comes up with a theme and we vote on which one. Then the staff member who got all the votes has to come up with a list for everyone to choose from (on occasion the Director checks it through and may ban some!) This makes thinking up a name for a new bird much simpler as it focuses the thoughts of the trainer and it allows the staff to work out the age of a bird by its name. The theme is only a guide and on occasion, for various differing reasons a bird may be named out of sequence. One rule we have set ourselves is that each bird only gets its name the day it flies loose for the first time.