Hawk Conservancy Trust - The Gold Standard for Visitor Attraction COVID Safety

Like nearly all visitor attractions currently, attendance is limited to pre-bookings only, with an estimated 250 tickets available each day. The day begins with an initial masked greeter armed with a clipboard and pen, who checks your pre-booking and then ensures you provide contact tracing information either via the NHS COVID app or by manually taking a note of contact details. You are then invited into the gift shop, which in the morning operates as the ticketing entrance, where your tickets are checked by a member of staff who is masked and behind a perspex protector that surrounds the cash desk. Throughout the day, every door and window to this area is left open for ventilation.

Once inside the park the overwhelming majority of the attraction is outside, meaning that the core COVID mitigation that guests have to be mindful of is ensuring social distancing. The extremely limited guest numbers and the size of the site make this a largely trivial issue, where even on a near capacity day you can easily be wandering around an area alone or with perhaps one or two other groups within sight. Of course, once the displays start people will start to gather and so distancing becomes something that has to be considered. This is where the mindfulness of the Trust first shows itself, as it soon becomes very obvious as to why the attendance limit is so low. 

The three displays occur at different outdoor arenas: an initial general purpose arena with wooden benches spread out around the semi-circular edge; a multi-level small grandstand style arena looking out towards a meadow; and a final woodland area with semi-circular perimeter seating. Whilst prior to 2020 guests would have been able to enter at any time to choose their seat, all three arenas are now closed until a half-hour before the demonstration, at which point volunteer greeters arrive to manage guest seating. Armed with the ultimate in COVID safety equipment, greeters are each issued a COVID social distancing stick. Otherwise known as a 2m dowel with tennis balls on each end. After sanitising hands, guests are directed to one of several of these greeters who will lead them to the next available bench. The greeters select an appropriate bench by laying one end of their social distancing stick next to the last seated group, and seating the next group at the other end of the stick. Benches either have adequate spacing front and back anyway, or rows have been removed or rearranged. The whole process is simple, quick and works.

The limited number of guests ensures that not only everyone gets a seat, but everyone gets a seat that is at least 2m away from any other group. Two additional bonuses come from this, first everyone gets a fantastic view and second the birds have even more space to fly low into or perhaps land and take an upclose break. Getting close to the birds is certainly something that is a core part of the Hawk Conservancy experience, and whilst they have suspended holding the birds as part of the normal day activities due to COVID safety, they make up for it in the demonstrations and the totally not deliberately targeted near misses from the birds. In a piece about health and safety, it’s perhaps pertinent to mention that the greatest safety risk you’ll face on a visit to the Hawk Conservancy is being side impacted by a low flying vulture. But you’ll be absolutely fine so long as you remember you’re there to see birds of prey and not wildfowl, so when someone yells “duck” you’ll know it is an instruction and not an opportunity to get your camera out.

Then comes lunch. The Trust is home to a large restaurant, which somewhat luckily was designed with the ability to open up an entire glass wall for ventilation. There’s also plenty of space for eating either inside the restaurant itself, at an open ended marquee, or at outdoor picnic benches. In 2020 an option was available to pre-book a packed lunch, which would be brought out to the picnic area, but this hasn’t returned in 2021 presumably as the restaurant queue for food is fairly fast moving anyway. Distancing, mask requirements, hand cleansing, perspex barriers between guests and staff, and the ventilation from the large opened doors ensure that every safety recommendation has been met. But then additional protocols to ensure each and every table is sanitised after guest use, seems to go just that extra mile for safety. Sanitisation is something we’ve seen mentioned in many an attractions COVID FAQ’s, but is frequently one that can be hard to actually ever be seen in action. Sanitisation at the Hawk Conservancy Trust is very real, and even outside of high traffic areas you’ll see staff members routinely sanitising railings and barriers.

Post lunch and you might need to use some of the other facilities at the Trust. They’ve thought this through too. The main guest toilets are managed by volunteers who organise everyone into queues outside at a safe distance between groups, manage a one-in-one-out policy, and finally ensure all guests entering first sanitise their hands and wear an appropriate face covering.

Finally, after three fantastic flying demonstrations and plenty of time to walk around the aviaries, comes the end of the day. Like any good tourist attraction, the preferred exit is via the gift shop, and when the money from that shop goes back into the charity it’s even more preferable. Being a small shop, guest entry is controlled by staff who let in a group at a time, operating another one-in-one-out policy. As this can lead to a queue, side gates are opened to allow guests to bypass this and head straight out to the car park. 

Wildlife visitor attractions have provided some of the best COVID safety procedures. Other notable mentions can be made to Monkey World in Dorset, and Marwell Wildlife also in Hampshire. However, the Hawk Conservancy Trust is truly the gold standard for safety procedures. After a couple of visits in the past twelve months I’m impressed not only with the standards being maintained, but by the fact that I have nothing in my mind that makes me think: “oh they could have done that better”. I can certainly think of some far better financed visitor attractions where their already poor starting point managed to become significantly worse within 12 months. 

The Hawk Conservancy Trust is somewhere I am incredibly happy to support and somewhere where I think all visitor attractions should seek to imitate and learn from in terms of their COVID safety. For nature lovers, or those who simply want a nice and enjoyable day out in the English countryside, the Hawk Conservancy Trust is a fantastic, and one of the safest, visitor attractions in the UK.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust is open daily throughout most of the year. More information can be found on the Trusts' website, https://www.hawk-conservancy.org.