Meet the falconer

I had a brilliant day's walking today. It was raining quite heavily first thing and I might have cried off the walk, except I was giving a lift to my friend, J. She might have cried off if I had not been picking her up! Six of us started at Baybridge near Blanchland and walked up on to the moors, completing a circular 10 mile walk.

During the day there was a mixture of sun/rain/sun/rain and sometime both at once, so plenty of rainbows. On one field we met a group of 5 falconers. They said they were catching rabbits. I manged to grab this image of one of the birds with her handler. They really are beautiful creatures.

I tried this image in mono and it is effective, but I could not bear to hide the colour of beautiful markings on the bird.

Can you see the rain hammering down?