By Jim Carlton | Photographs by Peter Prato for WSJ

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- It was showtime and Rocky wasn't having it.

"Rocky? Rocky?" Rebecca Rosen pleaded as the hawk refused to budge from a hotel balcony to retrieve a chunk of mouse meat off the gloved arm of a guest at the five-star Rosewood Sand Hill resort in Silicon Valley.

"Come on, buddy," she cooed.

Predator performances are becoming big business at swanky destinations that are looking to distinguish themselves with unusual perks. Rosewood started its raptor tours last June, including one featuring owls that costs $175 a person. It's called "Hanging with the Hoots."

Occasionally, the predators will make a kill in front of guests. Rocky once nabbed a bat that flew out from someone's umbrella at an event. "He inhaled it so quickly I only briefly saw its wing," Rosen said.

Brian Landers and his team of about a dozen meeting-and-event consultants attended the Rosewood falconry event during their stay this month, as they did in Marrakesh, Ireland and Dubai. What amazes him? A fearsome bird landing on his outstretched arm.

"You feel like you're the aircraft carrier and the bird is the plane getting ready to land on deck," said Landers, 56, from Los Angeles.

Napa Valley's Bouchaine Vineyards offers a "Falconry in the Garden" event where guests sometimes get to stroll through a field or vineyard while a hawk flies overhead looking for rodents, reptiles and other critters. It comes with a glass of wine.

"We just had a couple do a hawk walk for their anniversary," said Jordan Salomon, a wine consultant for the venue. "The husband loved birds."

These events are hosted by falconry schools that are licensed by the federal government, so guests can legally touch protected birds. Such schools have expanded from two 30 years ago to several dozen, according to Scott McNeff, former president of the North American Falconers Association.

Some critics say the birds are treated like circus animals. But trainers say they help the predators, such as when Rosen flushes out small birds for them to strike. She points out that her three main show birds -- Rocky, a chatty peregrine falcon named Rambo, and Hootbert, a wise-looking spectacled owl -- could just fly away and never return.

"We don't own them. They own us," Rosen said. "Because if they stay out overnight in a tree, they're not going to wake up at dawn to go looking for us. It's us that wakes up at dawn to go looking for them."

Some guests act flightier than the birds.

In Columbus, Ohio, falconer Joe Dorrian caught a woman, apparently under the influence, trying to open the box of a red-tailed hawk as he showed her group another raptor. He shut the box before she could get close.

"She said she wanted to hug him," said Dorrian, who runs the Ohio School of Falconry. "You don't do that."

Trainer Kate Marden 86ed a fifth-grader after he nearly hit one of her low-flying hawks with his phone at a demonstration near Sacramento. "I grabbed him by the collar, walked him to his parents and said he was done."

Marden's hawks can also deliver wedding rings to brides or grooms at nuptials, though she usually uses fake rings in case her birds get scared and fly off.

Rosen is careful not to expose her birds to any drunks in the crowd. "If you're liquored up or you give off serial killer vibes," she said, "they will not come anywhere near you."

Hootbert the owl seems particularly fond of the bachelorette parties where he and his preening co-stars occasionally perform. "You get the girls with the low-cut shirts and the body glitter, and he just falls in love," Rosen told a Rosewood audience lounging on the resort lawn.

This comment prompted (human) hoots.

Audience member Beth Hoffman, a diver, blurted out that male dolphins can be flirty too. "I have been instructed to not give them attention and swim the other way!" Hoffman, who is 62 and a company vice president, added later.

Falconry originated in places like ancient Mongolia as a way to hunt small animals by letting the birds do some of the dirty work. The birds play along because their humans invite prey and dole out treats. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an enthusiast.

Rosen stumbled into falconry while waitressing in Arizona some 20 years ago. A customer mentioned he used falcons to scare off pigeons at a nuclear power plant. Captivated, Rosen and her husband eventually started their own bird business, Authentic Abatement.

Then she noticed how guests at California vineyards, where she was hired to deter pests, watched the raptors in awe.

In the performance at Rosewood, Hootbert perched stoically atop a patio chair, his gaze intense. Rosen adores the owl so much she sometimes lets him ride shotgun in her Volkswagen Atlas. Passing drivers do double-takes when he swivels his head.

"He has a very tiny chicken neck, and it has twice as many vertebrae as us, and that's what allows him that 270-degree neck rotation," she said, adding a little-known fact: Owls have a two-chambered stomach through which food digests so slowly it affects their voice.

"If I'm listening to an owl now, I can tell whether it's eaten by the pitch of its hoot," she said.

Putting away Hootbert, she coaxed Rambo onto her arm as he cawed away. "He's a little chatty, I'm sorry," she said, giving Rambo a mock frown. "He's rude, he's Scottish."

Finally came Rocky. The event consultants took turns playing aircraft carrier for the hawk, and most seemed elated -- although Joy Kim, one of two Rosewood salespeople in the group, flinched when Rocky soared onto her arm. "It was scary," she said.

At the end, Rosen brought Hootbert back out for selfies. She offered a heads-up: "He might nibble on your face, maybe preen your hair a little. This species of owl is very social."

Write to Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 13, 2025 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)

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