PHOTOLIBRARY
Manchester United’s new signing flew in under the radar earlier this season and has dazzled on the wing. An arch predator, lightning fast, he caused a flutter ’round Old Trafford, yet not even the most ardent United fans have seen his skills. Last month, I took him for a walk and fed him bits of mangled chicks.
Bertie the Harris Hawk is employed by the biggest football club in the world to keep the pigeons from turning the Theatre of Dreams into an Amphitheatre of Ammonia. And, unlike other, more celebrated employees of Manchester United, Bertie’s skills can be appreciated by all, no matter what team you support, in a visit to Gauntlet Birds of Prey Eagle & Vulture Park, about half an hour’s drive from Manchester city centre.
Despite his performances for the Premier League champions, at Gauntlet, Bertie is pretty far down the pecking order. He’s outweighed by owls, vultures and eagles, and outpaced by the Peregrine Falcons.
I’ve long been fascinated by birds of prey, and requested a flight with the biggest bird of them all, a White-tailed Sea Eagle, which has a whopping 2.44m wingspan.
It was blowing such a gale when I arrived straight from the airport that I wasn’t sure an eagle would be able to land on my outstretched arm. Centre manager Graham Bessant confirmed that it was too windy for the Sea Eagle, who could take my head off with a misjudged landing in windy conditions. I tried to act disappointed.
If the wind died down slightly, Graham said we could take out Hannah the Bald Eagle, who is enormous, but not quite as enormous as the Sea Eagle. While we were waiting, Graham introduced me to his other birds.
I fell in love with Roger, a stunningly beautiful European Eagle Owl, and was thus relieved to discover that Roger is a girl. Probably the only girl in the world called Roger, she’d been brought up as a boy for eight years until she produced an egg one morning.
If Roger’s beauty perch is high above the other birds, the unfortunate Hooded Vultures fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Even huge vulture fans like Graham admit these fierce, ungainly birds “just aren’t sexy”, which doesn’t help him in his efforts to draw attention to their plummeting numbers worldwide in recent years.
Graham went in to feed them and was madly harangued by Basil, whose raucous display of wing-flapping aggression was reminiscent of his TV namesake, Basil Fawlty. When the vultures had swallowed their lunch of rat al fresco, Basil literally tried to scare the other birds sick, doing his best to make them vomit up their meals so he could pounce and gobble up a vile bile dessert.
Truly disgusting.
Next we took Bertie for a walk over the fields, sending him off to a perch in the trees and then marvelling at his high-velocity, heat-seeking return to the falconry glove on my arm, attracted by a dead chick from Graham’s shoulder bag of carcasses. Then it was Hannah’s turn. She hated the blustery conditions, but after a bit of coaxing, she spread her enormous wings and flew off like a pterodactyl into a tree a couple of fields away – and stayed there… Graham called and whistled, but to no avail. We could just about see her vague outline between the branches. After 10 minutes of waiting, Graham produced his secret weapon and set it on my arm: a frozen salmon head.
Seconds later, Hannah emerged, flying in a wide arc. With eyesight tuned eight times better than ours, she had spied her favourite snack and was now steering a course for my outstretched arm. The day turned dark for a second, I felt my hair blow back and my arm shuddered. The eagle had landed. And she weighed a tonne.
The Bald Eagle’s scientific name is Haliaeetus leucocephalus, but after a lunch of salmon head and raw chick, with blood and entrails dripping down Hannah’s beak, Halitosis leucocephalus would have been more appropriate. Her breath got stronger as her beak got closer. I fought to hold my arm out straight, as instructed, but Hannah was too heavy and, as my arm began to bend, my head came within striking distance of her sharp beak.
Graham leapt in to take Hannah back to her perch and I took off back to Manchester, taking care to say my good-byes to Bertie and Roger… and not to pass too close to Basil.
Zooming in
Gauntlet Birds of Prey Eagle & Vulture Park is just outside Knutsford; come off the M6 at Junction 19 or the M56 at Junction 7 – it’s next to Fryer’s Rose Nursery and Garden Centre. From March to October the park is open seven days a week from 11am to 5pm; from November to February it’s open weekends only, 11am to 4:30pm. Adults: £3.50, children: £2.50, OAPs: £3, family tickets (two adults and two children): £11. Manchester Road, Knutsford, Cheshire, tel: +44 (0)1565 754419, www.gauntlet.info
Hovering
Home while in Manchester was the four-star Abode Hotel. This is a very cool hotel. So cool, my wife, Claire, and I were a little apprehensive about bringing our four-month-old son to squeal through the ambience. We needn’t have worried – baby Christian got top priority. The staff were so attentive it was like having an au pair.
We were in a Fabulous suite (the others on offer are Comfortable, Desirable and Envious). With fusion décor, open-plan living area, vast bed, even a DVD library, it does exactly what it says on the tin.
And the food… Oh, the food! With chirpy Christian Little in tow, it was suggested the MC Café Bar & Grill would be a better option than the more formal multi-award winning Michael Caines Restaurant. We were absolutely not disappointed. Claire and I had chunky steaks; Christian had the house milk. I was planning a Basil-the-vulture style assault on Claire, to claim an extra meal, but was so stuffed I couldn’t move. Tremendous.
From £79 per room, including breakfast. 107 Piccadilly Street, Manchester, tel: +44 (0)161 247 7744, www.abodehotels.co.uk
