Ferruginous Hawk

A month ago we were supposed to be doing a Hawk Walk along the New Burn, a tributary of the River Tyne (not on the Tyne itself as we first thought). But that had to be postponed as it rained cats & dogs (see here).

It was rescheduled to today, and happily as it was dry and reasonably sunny we thoroughly enjoyed our 2 hours with the birds and their handler. First we were introduced to several birds in his office (including the hawk in the main blip), then we went out with his favourite Harris Hawk named Tyse (after Mike Tyson - when the bird was young he thought it was a male, and when he realised his mistake it was too late to change the name!).

Tyse was happy to oblige us with lots of aerobatics, including skillfully flying through a narrow gap between us - the handler took a short video of this on his phone for us! Getting good photos was tricky at this point as the light under the trees was rather poor. However the photo of Tyse perching in a tree (in the extra) came out reasonably well even at ISO 4000 (exposure 1/80 at f4).

This was a Christmas treat from our sons, which we finally got round to arranging.