In the Souq Waqif, you could buy a peregrine falcon for about $100, although I never saw anyone buying one. What people were buying however were decorated falcon hoods, as being worn by these three falcons. Presumably they work like horse blinkers, or so the falcons don’t have to put up with tourists staring at them. I was unsure as to what you would actually do with a falcon hood without a falcon.
There is evidence of falconry in the Middle East as far back as 3000 BC, both as a sport of the nobility and by the Bedouin to hunt for food.
During autumn the houbara bustard, valued for its delicious meat, flies from the northern hemisphere to the Arabian peninsula and Africa to over-winter. Its migration is preceded by that of peregrine and saker falcons which the Bedoiun captured as they made their own way south. Once the falconers managed to trap one of the highly prized birds, they had only two to three weeks to train it before the migrating houbaras started to arrive. Ideally, the training of the falcon was completed by the day when the first houbaras arrived, which the Bedouin would then hunt with his falcon throughout the winter months, to augment their meagre diet.
Falconry in the Arab states has remained popular to the present day, with top birds commanding high prices, occupying first class seats in planes, and, in Qatar, even having their own passports. The peregrine falcon is the fastest bird in the world, so probably enjoys travelling by plane for a bit of a rest.
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