Name: Craft Seasonal Dumplings with Chef Preeti Mistry
Start: 2026-05-17T05:30:00-07:00
End: 2026-09-13T07:30:00-07:00
Location: Napa

Raptors Among The Vines

By Carey Sweet
| Images by Nat & Cody Gantz
| August 27, 2025

Rosen with Rambo, a 17-year-old Peregrine falcon.

It’s awe inspiring when a Harris’s hawk lands on my leather-gloved arm. A millisecond ago, it was resting on its handler’s wrist. Then, as I summoned it with a bit of raw mouse meat, whoosh! It arrived with a gust of wings and claws in a surprisingly feather-light landing. It delicately took the meat—I want to believe its slight nod was in thanks— then soared off to do its real work: chase nuisance birds.

I’m at Bouchaine Vineyards, the spectacular 100-acre Napa-Carneros winery, exploring the Falconry in the Garden experience, where Authentic Abatement owner Rebecca Rosen brings some of her flock to demonstrate how the winged warriors of prey help keep the property earth friendly.

Many wineries build tree- or pole-mounted owl boxes for natural pest control (in a four-month breeding cycle, a family of five owls can consume 3,000 vine-damaging rodents, Petaluma’s All About Owls president Alex Godbe told me). Rosen installs these, too.

But since 2016, she has worked with Bouchaine owners Gerret and Tatiana Copeland to amp things up by employing trained falcons and hawks to sustainably manage grape-stealing bird invasions in the winery’s 1880s-era vineyards.

The raptors—Rosen maintains about 15 various species— are released to intimidate and chase pest birds from the estate. For Bouchaine, she mainly brings out Rocky the Harris, Rambo the peregrine and Hootbert the spectacled owl.

“Each bird seems to prefer certain venues,” she said. “It becomes their territory.”

As we stand on a grassy hill overlooking San Pablo Bay, San Francisco and Mt. Tamalpais, it’s magnificent to see Rocky swoop and dive and possibly giggle as the fruit thieves below him scatter. It’s well worth noting that the well-fed predators do not harm any of the rogue birds.

After the show, it’s time to collect Rocky then stroll back down the hill for a glass of wine and a picnic I’ve packed for savoring on the veranda. I grab photos of my new friend Rocky hanging with his mom Rosen, and resist offering him some of my charcuterie.

As exotic as it sounds, Northern California has an avid bird of prey community. The animals are specially protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and require very specific nurturing. Plus, no amateur wants to be face-to-face, as I have been, with a Eurasian eagle-owl teasing me to pet it if I dare, as it stares at me with golf-ball-size orange-black eyes and shows off its six-foot wingspan. “At any given time I’ll have around 20 raptors under my care,” Rosen said. “Since our [Lodi] facilities are expansive, we have become the local bird sitters for other falconers when they go on vacation.”

The company has become a family affair, as Rosen’s husband and daughter are also falconers. She never meant, she adds, to become an expert with the beautiful beasts. She was working at a bar many years ago, and a patron asked if she was interested in joining his professional falconry team. Why not? she thought.

“I come from a long line of entrepreneurs,” she said. “This makes me a terrible employee, so starting my own business was inevitable. As far as the industry, well, sometimes your path in life just chooses you instead of the other way around.”