Early this evening, seconds before I opened a bottle of Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin (for I hadn’t yet zinned today), the California Foundation for Birds of Prey called to see if I was available to rescue an injured hawk 30 miles away in south Sacramento in the middle of rush hour traffic. Since my driving ability was not yet impaired, I accepted the assignment. It was an injured hawk in someone’s backyard; it had been there all day and couldn’t fly; they speculated that the bird had been shot in the wing. I was about four miles into the trip when the women called and told me they couldn’t find the bird. She’d sent her husband out to help me by corralling it, ready for my arrival because it was starting to get dark. I advised her to keep an eye out for the hawk and that I would come anyway. A few minutes before I was scheduled to arrive, she called excitedly to tell me that they had found the hawk in the yard. Of course when I arrived, they had once again lost sight of it. The husband carried a large fishing net and I asked him not to use it unless we had to because I didn’t want to deal with extricating the hawk’s talons from the net. After about ten minutes, we located the hawk and I approached the frightened creature prepared to cover it with a towel but despite its injuries and inability to fly, it moved like lightening and scurried past me in a flash—into the man’s fishing net! What a feisty sharp shinned hawk this is. I was able to easily remove it from the net and place it into my picnic basket, placing the basket on the floor of the front seat of my car and holding the top down with my pilates mat. The little guy jumped and struggled during the 40 minute ride to the clinic and while I waited for a veterinarian to take the bird from me, he managed to move the lid of the basket quite forcefully several times. I hope that means he will survive but I do not yet know the extent of his injuries.
When I returned to my car and placed the carrier and towels into the trunk, the pair of leather gloves I use in my hawk rescues were still laying where I tossed them in the trunk. I realized that I hadn’t yet taken a photo today, and I remembered that today’s daily challenge was “pair,” so I took a few shots. This pair of gloves did indeed come to the rescue today. . . along with a fishing net.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 1000
f/1.4
1/80
Lovely rich color and texture!
[…] nights ago (I thought it might have been a Sharp shinned hawk) and blogged about in a post I titled Pair Of Gloves To The Rescue had to be euthanized due to the severity of its injuries. It had a compound fracture of one wing […]