As my wife is a huge fan of owls I was very happy to discover the National Bird of Prey centre. I booked the owl experience were a highly knowledgeable expert with talk you through several owls. During the talk you will be allowed to handle some of the birds.

After the talk you are brought out to a field where you are able to fly an owl. Once you are finished flying the owl you are brought on a tour of all the other birds in the centre. There are even some celebrity birds there with one of the eagles appearing in numerous shows including "Vikings".

The centre also nurses birds that are injured back to health and appears to be involved with the reintroduction of birds of prey to Ireland. It was also nice to hear them explain the danger of rat poisons to these animals as it is something people might not have though about.

We booked a hawk walk for our family of 4. We started with a group learning about the different birds at the centre which was very informative and we all had a favourite! It was then time to meet some birds individually and maybe have a pat but our hawk, Maggie, was ready for her walk. The weather wasn’t kind to us as it was blowing a little to much for her to fly comfortably but our guide was amazing, we moved locations a number of times to suit Maggie and we all had a number of opportunities to call her and have land on us. There were plenty of treats for her and we got some great photos. We headed back to the centre and as we had missed the interaction with the other birds we then experienced a personal interaction with a number of owls including a gorgeous baby barn owl. Would highly recommend, my children now want to move to Ireland so they can learn the art of falconry!