My wife and I over our years of traveling together maintain a friendly, slightly tongue in cheek banter about one aspect of our travel plans for every trip. When we’ve settled on a location, her internet sleuthing very quickly goes to searching out zoos, aquariums and other animal-related adventures we could get up to. Somewhere on our life journey together I issued an edict…. only one zoo per year. Don’t get me wrong… I love animals. An occasional zoo, especially a renowned one like in San Diego, say…. I’m all in. But given the choice of spending part of a day looking at animals or wandering a new locale, I’m going to opt for the latter 99 times out of 100.

When we were making plans for our time on Vancouver Island my wife found a wildlife sanctuary focused on birds of prey that was serendipitously located just off the highway on our way to a cottage as we travelled to Qualicum Bay. As she dug further into it she discovered that not only could we walk around and look at hawks and owls and such, but we could also get up close experiences with a variety of raptors. I’ll admit, that sounded pretty cool. So my 2022 “zoo” was going to be something called “The Raptors” just outside Duncan, BC.

That above is a massive turkey vulture flying past us less than 20 feet away. So close you could hear the quiet roar of wind beneath its wings. We timed our arrival here so we could see one of their flying demonstrations and make sure we had a front row seat. While the vulture did some fly pasts there was narration and Q&A on this guy including what he eats, his habitat and much more. I can’t really remember much that was said because I was too enthralled just watching him from such a close distance.

Not to be outdone, one of the other flying demonstrations was a bald eagle. To say we were in awe watching this is an understatement. They had set up a small pool to have this eagle demonstrate how it could grab fish out of the water from in flight. He kind of flubbed that drill but we got to watch him walk around the pool a bit flapping his wings which was quite funny. For the rest of the demonstration he was absolutely majestic. We saw him use his exceptional eye sight to track other eagles flying very high overhead and somehow also manage to keep track of all of us sitting in bleachers watching him.

One of the other flying demonstrations was from an owl named “Mr. Inspector”. I can’t adequately describe the feeling of watching him soar a mere few feet past us. Little did I know I’d be getting even closer to him later that afternoon…..

As part of the ticket we purchased, we had some time for up close interactions with a number of the raptors. And when I say “up close”, I really do mean that.

For a little bit more perspective, here is the same bird on my wife’s arm.

We had someone trained in the handling of falcons and owls and eagles (oh my!) teaching us about each of the species we got to handle. Each of us in the group got to put on a falconry glove and have each of the birds sit on our hand for a while. This peregrine falcon and I had a lovely time together.

My favourite encounter was with Mr. Inspector. When I first took hold of him (or, more correctly, he took hold of me) it felt like he was staring into my soul. He was incredibly beautiful and the entire time he was on my wrist I was completely taken by his presence. By this photo, it looks like he was substantially less impressed with our time together.

As we were wandering the grounds on our way to our last experience, my wife asked if this changed my view on my “one zoo a year” rule. I let her know this was making a compelling case for her point of view, but that the other wildlife sanctuary she wanted to visit on this trip would be made alone with me sitting at a craft beer joint enjoying my afternoon that way. That being said, the last experience of our visit to The Raptors was breathtaking. Luckily, my wife captured it with this video below. A hawk flying at me and landing on my arm.

I’m glad I listened to her about this place….. it was one of the highlights of the entire trip for me.