Dunboyne flirting

IT'S not every day, it's true, that you find yourself standing in the middle of a a field with an owl on your head.

But having spent many hours attempting to recreate Don Conroy's barn owls growing up, not to mention being a Harry Potter fan, this was an opportunity not to be missed.

And so there I was in Dunboyne Castle, Co. Meath, on a chilly winter afternoon, living out my Hogwarts fantasy with a barn owl called Twinkle Toes making herself at home on my head.

And while Twinkle Toes may have been cute, he certainly didn't live up to his name, thrashing about my carefully blow-dried hair until it resembled, well, a nest. But hey, at least HE was comfortable.

Aside from Twinkle Toes, our falconry expert Bernard Byrne also introduced us to Tiddlywinks, a brown owl, and Bugsy, a Harris hawk.

Tiddlywinks was a fairly docile creature but Bugsy was another story altogether. Once Bernard removed his leather hood, which

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