She was at the 30 and…
… to the 40 to the 50 to the 40 to the 30 to 20.
I’m faking it – I really don’t know anything about football, but I do know that I was on a football field yesterday afternoon. Ok, fine. I wouldn’t even have known that unless my H hadn’t clearly said, “I’m taking Gracie to a football field.”
Of course, I was fascinated and repelled simultaneously. Why a football field? Sounds so… sporty.
Luckily, it had nothing to do with dueling squads of human battering rams, vexatious announcers, mouth guards or sweaty tattoos. That being the case, I willingly went along as a first time official outing photographer.
The local highschool football field was vacant. It was a brisk 32° with a wind chill factor of about 21° – invigorating! My H, pockets filled with mouse cadavers, set up the perch and creance (a thin line attached to the hawk) and I followed along, excited about the chance to capture a Gracie-in-action shot. She flew about 5 times from the perch to my H’s gauntlet and reached up to 50 yards. By the last time, she had begun to lose interest as she was getting full. The entire exercise took about 20 minutes.
I was only able to get a few shots as my hands were freezing (and hawks fly a lot faster than you think):
Gracie in action - low flying along the 30 yard mark towards my H
Flying right towards us - what a sight!
Her reward (I really having nothing to say at this moment other than the macro feature on my camera works great)
Eating her reward - you can still see the mouse before it completely disappeared in her mouth (I just vomited a little bit)
This photo is just eye candy to make up for any visual violations in this post - I took it in the mews before we left