Davidized!

This week I’ve been helping to teach the Falconry & Raptors class at Quarry Hill. This is the third summer in a row I’ve helped with the class, so I’m pretty familiar with it and know what to expect.

Two years ago, during my first class we managed to trap and band a Red Tail Hawk (see the photos here) which was really amazing. Last summer however, we didn’t manage to trap anything (we also try to get Kestrels if we see them) – in fact we hardly saw any kestrels or red tails at all.

Today was our road trapping day, and boy was it a good one. We saw a ton of red tail hawks – four before we even made it out of the city (we headed west through the city this year so we could visit Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo for snack). Once we were out of town there were red tails and kestrels to be seen all over the place. The red tail hawk we managed to trap wasn’t even the bird we were trying to get – we’d been hoping to trap one of the four kestrels that were hanging out on some power lines, but when we got back to the trap we had a red tail hawk on it and it had managed to drag the trap all the way across the road into the other ditch.

I managed to take a few pictures of the bird while my fellow teacher, Kirk, put a band around its leg. They’re all up on flickr of course and you can find the set here.