To think this is cruel?

[ElTortilla]

At a fayre today and a local owl rescue has brought four owls to show the work they do. They're tethered to a stump by a rope attached to one of their legs via a metal foot thing. One of the larger owls keeps trying to fly away and obviously doesn't get far but ends up hanging by his leg upside down. Aibu to think this is cruel? Leave the owls at the sanctuary and let the humans do the showcasing!

I'm not sure about cruel but it's totally standard to tether up birds of prey like this.

I understand they need to be tethered, otherwise they'd fly off but I hated seeing the bird hanging upside down.

I obviously don't know the birds situation neither but I wonder why they don't rehabilitate them back into the wild?

Many would be incredibly vulnerable out in the wild and would likely not survive very long at all. A lot of the ones at our local displays were found injured or similar.

Maybe the tethers need to be a bit longer to allow them to move a bit more, but equally that could lead to other dangers? I don't know, I'm just musing!

If they have been hand-reared, they don't know how to hunt enough food for themselves, so rehabilitating them is actually more cruel as they would starve. We were told this at a birds of prey demonstration at Woodlands in Devon.

Ahh I see so at least they're likely to survive at the rescue rather than fending for themselves in the wild.

If it is a Southern Boobook Owl, they are native to Australia and so that's possibly why it feels necessary to hang upside down.

Yes, generally speaking.

One did fly off at our local display last summer, it took a good few hours to catch him again from memory

Agree that they wouldn't be equipped to survive in the wild but I'd not want to see a tethered owl hanging upside down.

How often was this happening? Were the handlers helping them immediately?

There is a yearly fayre in my town and they always have the local bird sanctuary come and they have all sorts of birds tethered as you have described.
You can hold one and have your photo taken for a donation to the sanctuary.
None of the birds seem to mind and all look really calm.

I think though that the bird you saw was obviously not cut out for it so it shouldn't be brought on these occasions, or was having a bad day and uncomfortable so they should have taken it back to the van, its travelling cage or whatever.
It probably was cruel to let it keep doing that.

It happened a few times while I was at the stall over five minutes. The man had his back to the bird so didn't see the bird upside down. A lady alerted him then he told the bird off for being silly.

Town beginning R?

They may be trying to get the owl used to the show arena. If they put it back in a travel box it wouldn't be able to stretch out and noise would be amplified so probably worse than being in the tent.