If you are looking for a day out filled with nature to entertain your children during the Easter holidays, I would thoroughly recommend the Hawk Conservancy Trust.
It’s a little bit of a trek from the Herald area, being just off the A303 near Andover, but it’s still in Hampshire and well worth the trip.
Our party of six comprised me, my wife and our eight-year-old daughter - a lover of snowy owls thanks to Hedwig in Harry Potter - plus our daughter’s eight-year-old best friend, her six-year-old brother and their mum, fresh from an earlier birdwatching trip to the New Forest which saw them get up at 4.30am!
We met in the car park at 10.15am, a quarter of an hour after the venue opened, and had a chance to browse the gift shop and have a look round some of the aviaries before a talk about vultures at 11am.
During this we learned that the site had been a farm until the 1960s, when Blue Peter featured an albino badger rescued by the farm owners. A throwaway remark by a presenter about popping down to the farm at the weekend to see the badger resulted in 400 people turning up, and when this became a regular occurrence a decision was made to end farming and start a conservation tourist attraction which gradually evolved into the Hawk Conservancy Trust.
As a football groundhopper, anything resembling a stadium fascinates me, and the trust has three arenas in which it presents its shows, each with their own natural features and shape, and a variety of covered and uncovered seating areas hewn out of wood which look like they have grown out of the landscape. There’s no worries about sight lines as virtually all of the action is taking place up in the air!
The first display, in the Woodland Arena at 11.30am, was devoted to woodland owls, including the Little, Tawny, Barn, Snowy and Great Grey varieties, which combined swooping low across the heads of the audience with perching on a collection of poles and trees.
Refreshingly the trust’s experts didn’t sugar-coat the experience for the children in their commentaries. They pointed out that as beautiful as the birds were, they were still ruthless and occasionally grumpy killing machines, and warned that anyone standing up during the display might end up with an owl stuck in their head! “Ducking is crucial!” was their final warning before the show began.
At 12.30pm there was a chance to construct a giant nest to see whether it met the same standards as those built by birds, and then we had a picnic lunch. There is also the Feathers Restaurant, which was pretty busy by 1pm.
The second flying display, in the Savannah Arena at 2pm, featured birds of prey from around the world, with an emphasis on Africa. Highlights included the extraordinary Secretary Bird, whose ground-level hunting techniques included leaping up to kick a fake snake, and a swarm of Black Kites, which provided the finale by plucking out of the sky three pieces of chicken that were catapulted into the air.
There was time for a visit to the children’s playground and to find the final clues in the bird trail challenge - a sticker for all who work out the magic word - before it was off to the Meadow Arena at 3.15pm for the third and final flying display.
This featured some of the biggest birds and they had a wide-open space in which to fly. It ended with a pair of Storks, which certainly stood out with their long legs, white and black plumage and extremely pointy beaks.
The appearance of the Storks told me something I didn’t know - they are a predator, but not a bird of prey. The latter use their feet to catch their food, while the former rely on their beaks.
As our health and safety aware commentator reminded us again: “They’re lovely birds, but when they’re coming towards you they’re like a flying spear!”
Fortunately nobody was impaled and the Storks were free to continue their traditional role of delivering babies to expectant women - at least that’s what we told the kids on our way home.
Paul Coates
For more information on days out at the Hawk Conservancy Trust, visit https://www.hawk-conservancy.org/