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11
Feb 2024
'Unflappable' owls wow wedding guests with ring deliveries
Just before Christmas one year, Ryan Stocks received a phone call from an employee to tell him that one of his owls was stuck behind a church organ.
The owl, who had been on duty at a wedding, had been spooked by something and wouldn’t come down. It had even set off a fire alarm by landing on a sensor. The trouble was, Ryan was in London but the owl was in Hull.
After dashing up the motorway, he arrived at the church just before it shut, spotted his bird, held out his hand, whistled and waited. Within seconds, the owl glided down and the drama was over.
Last year, Ryan’s Ripon-based company, Owl Adventures, bought Barn Owl Ring-Bearer, a Durham-based firm that was the first in the UK to hire out owls trained to deliver the rings at weddings, and he’s been busy ever since.
The ‘Hull incident’ was a rare glitch, he explains:
He adds:
A former pupil of Ripon City School (now Outwood Academy), Ryan, now an experienced falconer, set up Owl Adventures in 2011 and has 15 birds: three barn owls and 12 others, including a horned owl, steppe eagle, falcon, harris hawks, pygmy owl, Indian scops owl and a white-faced owl.
He also runs a 'mobile zoo', whose stars – snakes, lizards, tarantulas, a tortoise and various creepy-crawlies (his term) – all live in vivariums in his home.
Ryan and his fiancée Dee, who is, thankfully, as enthusiastic as he is about the whole menagerie, offer several services, all animal-based, including flying shows, visits to schools and care homes.
They even offer pest control, flying harris hawks to scare off pigeons and seagulls from industrial premises. Clients include Unilever, B&Q and Reckitt.
But it’s the barn owl ring-bearing service that grabs people's attention. Not because it’s unique – it may be the first service of its kind, but it’s no longer the only one – but because it’s so magical: owls make people happy.
Ryan says:
One of Ryan's Stocks' owls earning its keep.
Typically, Ryan will turn up for a wedding an hour early, to ensure that he and the owl can get into position unseen – it's supposed to be a secret, known only to the groom and best man.
He’ll then quickly train the owl-receiver to do his bit, and at the right point in the ceremony will slip into the back of the church, and release the owl. The best man, wearing a previously concealed glove, receives the owl, the rings are delivered, and the bride, hopefully, is delighted.
Some clients ask him to have the owl deliver notes, which isn’t great, he says:
After the ceremony, Ryan and his owl stick around to entertain guests and be photographed.
They can do up to three weddings a day in high season, as well as other shows, so he alternates the owls, Juno, Bailey, Sweep and Dusty. They’ve performed all over the UK, and even have a booking in Greece later this year.
Photo: Camilla Armstrong.
He says:
Most of the time, the owls behave – Ryan says it’s as if the glove is magnetic – but occasionally things don’t go to plan, as happened in Hull.
He even had one owl that was agoraphobic, and didn’t like flying outside.
You could say they’re... unflappable. But that’s not to say they don’t need looking after. They have a varied diet – cockerel chicks, mice, rats, rabbit, quail, all frozen and delivered by truck – and Ryan checks their health and weighs them daily. He says:
Fortunately, he’s pretty good at that. In fact, when he goes to goes to the vets in Ripon, they sometimes ask him his opinion.
He says:
Ryan and his feathered employees are proof, if it were needed, that the science and art of falconry may be ancient, but it hasn’t stood still. In fact, each of the owls is even fitted with a GPS gadget. He says:
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