Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital

The world's largest dedicated falcon hospital, on the road out to the airport, opened to the public for two-hour guided tours. The tours are well-organised: you go through the examination room, the operating theatre, the moulting aviary, and the museum, and you finish in a darkened room with the patients lined up on perches under hoods, waiting for the vet.

You get to hold a falcon. This is the point of the visit, and it makes for an unexpectedly resonant experience even for non-bird people. Book ahead; tours run twice a day.

things to do sight museum
A story
The hospital treats around 11,000 patients a year — all of them birds. The largest dedicated falcon clinic in the world, it runs everything from molting management to broken-wing reconstruction, and falconers fly birds in from across the Gulf for treatment.