Abu Dhabi for the birds,
Abu Dhabi is known for ambitious architecture, but the falcons are where it’s at
Abu Dhabi is a strange and amazing place, and you’ve undoubtedly heard a lot about the gleaming skyscrapers that jut out of sand. There’s the fabulous wealth of the locals, the busloads of exhausted migrant workers, the special licence required to buy alcohol, and the occasional scent of rose petals in the air. The new institutions — the noexpenses-spared outposts of the Guggenheim, Louvre and New York University — are optimistic imports in a place known for being awash in oil money but short on culture.
But you probably don’t know about the falcons — which are everywhere. There’s a falcon on the country’s coat of arms, and a falcon adorns the passport. The bird’s soaring wings inspired Norman Foster’s design for the Sheikh Zayed National Museum. The clubhouse of the Abu Dhabi Golf Club was designed to resemble a majestic — yet again, soaring — falcon perched atop a golf ball. The annual International Festival of Falconry offers participants the chance to observe the birds swooping across the dunes. And Etihad, Abu Dhabi’s national airline, even allows premium passengers to transport up to two falcons with them in the cabin. (Good luck agreeing on a movie.)
But the true centre of falconrelated novelties is the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital, which opened in 1999 and soon became the biggest and most comprehensive in the world. Long before oil-drilling equipment arrived, the region’s desert-dwelling Bedouins used falcons for hunting. But like all things in the Emirates, their meaning has shifted rapidly in the past 50 years. They’ve gone from hunting companions used to ferret out scarce resources to pricey status symbols used for sport for an oil-rich populace that, any time they feel peckish, just hop into a Maserati and head to Shake Shack.
I spent an afternoon on a group tour at the falcon hospital with two friends, Canadian expats who have been living in Abu Dhabi for more than five years. Here is just a smattering of what I learned from Hassan, our tour guide. There are 45 types of falcons, the females are larger than the males, and the smallest are the fastest (sometimes even reaching flying speeds of up to 350km an hour). Falcons can both carry and kill things up to twice their weight — which is probably why they’re rarely considered the front-runner for a babysitting job. Wild falcons live in the mountains, where they hunt daily for fresh meat. Most of the falcons that reside in the United Arab Emirates can trace their lineage to Germany and Austria, though there are now prohibitions on catching them in the wild and so breeding centre programs have expanded. To buy a falcon will set you back thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars.
Giving us some time to process that information, Hassan announced that we would now take a break for juice.
We moved into a large treatment room, and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by falcons. The space functions as both an operating theatre and a falcon storage facility. Dozens of falcons were perched on small Astroturf-covered benches, side-byside, hooded (to keep them calm) and looking endearingly confused.
One of the falcons was scooped off a bench, her head stuck into a cone attached to a tube and then fed anesthetic. The falcon slumped on an examination table, and we were encouraged to come closer. I stroked the soft chest of feathers and felt a powerful heartbeat. Hassan spread the bird’s wings, so we could see the massive span. And then we watched as the falcon got a pedicure.
Next, we took turns holding the falcons — while wearing heavy gauntlets — and having our pictures taken, mostly with frozen expressions conveying a mix of awe and terror. We wandered outside to tour the generous facilities, walking right into a free-flight aviary. It was sort of like visiting a zoo and then having them swing open the gates. With equal amusement, I watched the falcons swoop back and forth and a French tourist being warned twice to stop approaching the birds and their giant talons. The tour coming to a close, we resisted the urge to upgrade our tour package to include a buffet lunch in a traditional Arabic tent.
For most of my time in Abu Dhabi, I felt like an outsider. The local culture felt largely impenetrable — beyond the non-stop eating and shopping at mostly Western imports, I mean. I met a total of one Emirati for a very brief period of time, instead floating in an upper-middle-class Western expat dream. But the falcon hospital was the one place I felt like I was let in on a local secret, on a living connection between the not-so-distant but very different past. It’s no wonder the falcon hospital has rapidly become one of the top tourist destinations in the region. “Mick Jagger was here recently,” said one of my Abu Dhabi-dwelling friends, proudly. “The falcons were his favourite part, too.”