The claws aren’t sharp. I was just so surprised and in a hurry to get a photo. The bird is a Karakara or in German Geierfalke. Apparently it is one part falcon, one part parrot and one part vulture. It runs around on the ground a bit which makes the claws quite harmless. This adorable weirdo is named Yoshi. The falconer did a great job teaching his audience about the four birds he presented and I am sure the little girl who was brave enough to let the sea eagle land on her arm will never forget it. I guess she was maybe 10 years old. I wouldn’t have been brave enough. My partner lost a close up staring contest with that eagle.
The park overall was a delight, huge and instead of many different animals they mostly had different types of deer, wild goats and sheep. There were a few Przewalski horses, yaks, emus roaming free, llamas in the parking lot for some reason and boar… I never met a boar in the wild… those were enclosures where people were inside with the animals in the woods. Boar are scary…. Emus as well. The yaks and horses were the only animals in a closed off enclosure. The falconer had about 10 birds total which all get to fly daily. There was also a separate enclosure with north African monkeys. Inside this enclosure there is a short walk maybe 30 minutes or so where you can walk among the monkeys. They had a lot of lovely little monkey babies and mostly ignored the people walking around on the path. These monkeys apparently live in a similar climate so can be outside all year round.
I am usually skeptical about zoos and the like. I know they do both educational and preservation work and yet I am always afraid to encounter unhappy animals. I think this was one of the better experiences. the park is huge, so huge that you take the car between the different feeding spots for the animals because walking is too far. Just don’t go with a sports car… this was less road and more of a gravel piste. The animals get to roam freely in huge enclosures and we didn’t encounter any at several feeding spots.
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I’ve met wild boar at night on the motorbike, quite scary!
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I once had an Eagle Owl (I think) land on me at an Owl sanctuary. Weighed a ton and tried to bite my thumb off through the glove - bloody hurt, even with the heavy glove!
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I can recommend the book “H is for Hawk”, where a scottish woman decides to try rearing a Goshawk, famously the most twitchy murder-machine bird that won’t even sit still on a glove without attacking anything that moves.
(But also yes, Eagle Owls are NO JOKE)
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It’s hard for me to find a selfie or anything of just me. My wife is the photographer of the family and logs about a hundred shots a day of the girls, and sometimes I just happen to be in one. Such as me pretending to throw one into the ocean:
White 40-something male ++
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I’m impressed you have to pretend to throw your daughter in the sea. Mine usually makes a beeline for the water to paddle regardless of the weather or time of year.
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Oh, she’s like the Uruk Hai. She does not know pain. She does not know fear. She will not rest until her feet are ice blocks.
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That book is soo good. But being set in Cambridgeshire, I missed completely that she is Scottish. I guess the writer didn’t try to write her with an accent…
Ah, I’m wrong! I met her FRIEND who was Scottish.
And the author’s name is Macdonald, but she’s NOT Scottish, she’s very English.
Yeah, absolutely amazing book. (Will stop hijacking the selfie thread now)
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I’m on a slow course back to having no beard.
The left is March and the right is mid-June. I’ve gone shorter since. A few colleagues have suggested I keep it which kind of ruins my plan of getting rid of it when I’m back in the office.
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Just keep shaving off a centimeter every week or two. Really confuse 'em.
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It’s been a nice break from shaving every other day, but I’m not sure it’s saved me all that much time given the additions to my morning and evening routines and the occasional trim. 
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Boo. 
(I admit I go for practically-no-maintenance on mine – it gets a bit of shampoo when I’m washing my hair, an occasional moustache trim so that I can still eat, and that’s about it.)
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You mean you don’t like looking like a walruss and using your beard to stash a few rations in?
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[shifty look] Maybe.
But by choice, not without the option as happens when the moustache gets too long.
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Today is plant-murdering day.
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Well those plants are fecked!
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The brambles tried to catch me by it. Not today.
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Is that the world’s tiniest chainsaw?
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