Deborah Knight, hawk walker at Ashford Castle, Cong, Co Mayo
It's just as well both my husband and I are falconers or there would have been a divorce by now. Having a hawk or a falcon is the biggest commitment of your life. It's all consuming.
It started by chance. We went on a day out to a hawk conservancy in the UK and were blown away by the birds. We started studying them, did some courses and, after a year, got a license to get our first hawk.
That was 17 years ago and we've been running the school for the last nine. Once we realised we could make a living working with the birds, there was no way we were ever going to do anything else. It's our obsession. We have 26 birds now, a collection of hawks, eagle owls and falcons.
Our day starts at 9am when we go in and check the birds are alright. We then weigh them. Each bird of prey has a hunting weight and once they reach it the hunting mechanism kicks in, so that's when we fly them.
A hawk is not a pet, it's not affectionate and it doesn't work for praise. The entire relationship is a business one that is built on trust. These birds fly free, hundreds of feet high. It is only that special relationship between falcon and falconer that will bring it back down to you.
Once we have checked them over we sit them outside for a bit. Hawks have a bow perch, as they would in the wild, which lets them wrap their feet around it. Falcons stand flat-footed and so need a different kind of perch.
At this stage our first visitors start coming in for their Hawk Walks, which last for an hour or an hour-and-a-half. In summer, even with eight instructors on the go full-time, we spend the day chasing our tail we're so busy. In winter, it's a bit quieter - just five instructors - and we get a bit more time for training young birds.
We get all sorts of visitors, from three-year-old children to 83-year-old grandparents and each one is captivated. Some like the hunting element, some like to find out about the different personalities of the birds. To see their face when a bird swoops down on to their glove is amazing - it's a picture every time.
Each bird is unique and they try it on with us too, to see if they can get more rewards. I sometimes wonder if we have trained the bird or if the bird has trained us.
At lunchtime we stop and pick up rolls from the local shop and after that it's back out for more hawk walks. Then it's all the background stuff. It's a bit like a horse racing yard where, out front, everything looks immaculate but only because there's an army of people clearing away poo all day. And there is a lot of bird poo.
In the evenings, the birds get their main feed of raw meat, including rabbit, pheasant, quail, rats, mice and chickens, which we buy dead in bulk. The birds eat everything, fur, bones and all. Twelve hours later they regurgitate a pellet or casting, which we keep as a key indicator of their health.
Then there's the business side to look after but it's fair to say we are falconers first and business people second. We're just delighted our love of falconing can support us at all. When we go home the bird talk continues, especially as we have some young ones living with us at the moment.
• In conversation with Sandra O'Connell