Last Updated: May 3, 2026
The Raptor Free Flight presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona is the kind of program that makes you reorganize a Tucson stay around it. It’s an open-air demonstration in which Sonoran Desert raptors and other native birds — Harris’s hawks, crested caracaras, great horned owls, Chihuahuan ravens — fly completely untethered through a designated outdoor area, passing low over a seated audience on routes designed to reveal how each species actually hunts in the wild. There’s no glass between you and the bird; there’s no leash; there’s no enclosure overhead. Just open desert sky and a sequence of trained native raptors choosing their own flight paths. We first attended the Raptor Free Flight on an earlier Tucson stay, and Michael has been back repeatedly since — it remains one of the single best wildlife photography opportunities anywhere in the Southwest.
[Read more…] about Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona