01/08/2026
When flying our birds, we always try to encourage them and reward them specifically for showing natural behaviour, just like their wild counterparts. This makes sure that they have the most enriched life possible whilst they give us the pleasure of keeping them in captivity, and allows us to show our guests and clients the most realistic view into the lives of raptors.
This principle becomes more real with eagles, than with any other species when you truly give them the opportunity to fly as wild.
With River, our home bred 3 year old White Tailed Sea Eagle, we have pushed the boat out more than ever before. Having put in a tremendous amount of groundwork with her during her first 6 months, the bond and trust between eagle and falconer is taken to another level.
River routinely flies all over Scotland at various 5 star venues, and continues to blow us away with her skills and abilities in finding and taking best advantage of the conditions to gain height and show natural behaviour.
At today’s venue, she again showed her expertise. The conditions appeared to be marginal. On the surface we were expecting her to rise to a few hundred feet, stretching her wings, and showing our guests a taste of the potential with this species.
River however had other ideas of how today was going to go. Around 3 miles away from the castle, there is a hill named Mullwarcher. The west wind happened to be blowing just into the ridge. Below you can see Rivers GPS record, showing how she left Roxanne’s glove, cruised down wind, clearly having decided exactly where she planned to go. She bee lined straight for Mullwarchers ridge, and took the orographic elevator to 1850 feet, before coming overhead and stooping into our guests in the castle grounds for a lovely big trout tail.
River continues to surprise us every day with her joy and abilities in the air, her growing expertise with finding and using lift, and her reliability to come back to Roxanne wherever she is, no matter how long she goes out of sight to do her job and find her altitude.
She really is a perfect example of showing us that “you get out what you put in”, demonstrating the true potential of trained birds of prey.
❤️ 🦅 🏰 ⛰️ ☀️ 🐟 ❤️