£500-a-bird! How falcons get first-class airline treatment

This viral picture of VIP birds of prey en route to Saudi Arabia came as no surprise to Bryn Close, breeder to the sheikhsBryn Close was not surprised by the picture flying around the web this week showing 80 falcons on an airline flight to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The birds of prey sit on boxes on the middle-row seats, apparently ignoring the safety talk. “To me that’s totally normal, we do it all the time,” he says from a Doncaster industrial estate, where he breeds the fastes