Vagabond Tales- Soaring with the Raptors

Being falconers for the day has been a true highlight of our trip! We got up bright and early this morning to join Kitty Carroll, raptor specialist with the International Falconry Academy, at Hearthstone Gardens. This is how we found her when we arrived.

Preparing quail for the culinary offering today!
She was very knowledgeable and prides herself on championing the cause of all birds but particularly raptors. We had a bit of training and then we were surrounded by wings and talons.
We primarily worked with Harris Hawks but we also handled and fed a Red Tailed Hawk and 2 Barn Owls! For a total of 8 raptors.
The Harris Hawk. I realized today that I really need to do some arm workouts. Holding your arm in this position and holding the birds really gave my neck and arm a workout!
My mom would hate to see me cracking my gum! Sorry! I do think the video is worth watching even if I am not chewing my gum in a ladylike manner. This is Shelly…Harris Hawk.
These guys were so friendly! Loved being scratched on their tummy and under their neck. So downy!
Harry snapped this one of one in flight coming to me to be fed!
The only icky part was picking out the tasty bits of quail with our fingers for the birds. Kitty gave us long tweezers we could use to get the morsels out instead of our fingers but at the same time we were supposed to be a bit sneaky about putting the meat in the glove. Kind of difficult surprising the birds when you were wrangling food out of your pouch with 18 in tweezers. Awkward!

We ended the day with a 2.7 mile hike to the White Sulfur Springs Bath House just outside of the park. Originally, it was four floors high. The fourth floor is still in tact to walk around.

If you can enlarge this, it has great history of this spring dating back to the time the Native Americans were the primary inhabitants of this area.
Original four floors.
The water is very high. We believe at this water level…two floors would be underwater!
No wonder, they enclosed the springs. Love the cypress knees. I think they look like a sandcastle!
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