State 46 - Virginia

Raptor Hill Falconry - Stanley, VA

Today I’m going to highlight a bit of a different type of place. This is a for-profit business, as opposed to a rehab or education center. I typically avoid these because I’m not sure how the animals are treated, but this website seems more focused on education, has stacks if approval from state authorities, and the customer reviews are all positive.

I also hesitate because these places aren’t cheap, so I knows that limits the opportunity for a lot of you to go. I’m making an accepting today since I’m almost at the end of my 50 States of Owls, and for those that can do it, it is probably an amazing experience, and there aren’t that many opportunities for you to actually handle a raptor so I wanted everyone know that you can if you want to, you just can’t do it any old place, and there is a hefty price because you typically can’t handle these types of animals.

Boring stuff over, time for the owl!

Raptor Hill Falconry is a falconry experience. I’m going to keep the focus on the owl, but you can do an owl visit, a hunting bird experience, or a combined one where you get to handle both.

Aurora, an Eurasian Eagle Owl, seems to be the main owl they feature. Eagle Owls are one of the larger owls, and are some very beautiful and powerful birds. Get a look at those talons!

Even as a baby, those feet were huge! This is her getting ready for one of her first animal ambassador appearances. The main picture for this post was her 1 year birthday photo, so you can see how fast she grew. She’s older now, they don’t seem to do much social media so I think she’s around 4 years old now.

Here’s some TripAdvisor photos I grabbed so you can see you get to hold the owl and learn all about it and also to get an idea how big she is. I did see a few other random owls like a Screech Owl and a Barn Owl, so they may have had others, most show the Eagle Owl though.

Here is what they say in their training method section:

We use the training method that places mental and physical well being of the raptors first. How the birds perceive you and us, is most important, so, PRT (Positive Reinforcement Training) also known as ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) or Instrumental learning, is the only training method we use.

When utilizing PRT, our raptors are given free choice to participate or not, without the use of force or punishment.

We use PRT to desensitize the birds from “scary stuff”, allowing us to build trust, reduce stress, along with providing mental stimulation (raptors are smart!) and most importantly, our favorite, PRT encourages super strong bonds/relationships between bird and trainer (just like besties!).

​During your visit you may witness that many of our raptors seem to be preforming tricks or what we call “learned or trained behaviors”. Learning trained behaviors allows the birds to solve ways to get a reward, as they would do in the wild.

Teaching these trained behaviors allows the raptors much needed mental enrichment and can even help aid in their own care and management.