Meet Tara, my female, passager, Red-Tailed hawk. She's a beauty, IMO. A break in the clouds provided us with lots of sunshine to take this photograph :-)

Her trapping weight was 1,242 g.. She looked as if she had been through a battle royale earlier in the day as she was bleeding from 26 wounds on her feet and had 2 broken tail feathers. The nastiest wound took us the better part of 2 days to stop the bleeding.

4-23-12: Today Tara took her freedom. She had healed, put on some weight (1,278 g.) and taught me a lot about falconry. Now that she has made it past the critical first winter season she has a much better chance at a substantially longer life. We wish her well :-)