good (rainy) morning

Good (rainy) morning, hawkwatchers. Thanks to Susan Moses, we had a particularly exciting Saturday. The Tufts facility in Grafton, that had been caring for the injured 33 Oxford St. hawk for the past month, felt the hawk was ready to go home and gave Susan the happy task of releasing the red tail back into the wild. Susan and Amy got the bird at about 11:30AM in Grafton and came to Oxford St., Cambridge. At 12:45PM Saturday, on the grass in front of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Susan opened the box and the hawk flew out like a champ, quickly landing on a tree across the street, where its 2010 nest was located. The hawk surely knew it was home. Soon after that our released hawk and two other hawks were soaring overhead, often bumping each other and, finally, locking talons and spinning in a spiral. What a display.....I look forward to talking with Paul for an explanation about this activity.
Susan followed the progress of the hawk throughout its rehabilitation and Tufts felt she was the perfect candidate to set the hawk free. I sent some pix and explained the story in an email to Ken MacLeod of WBZ-TV, who did the story on Buzz and Ruby and the kids last year. Ken did a short piece on the release on the 11PM news last night. I hope some of you caught it......
GOOD WORK, SUSAN!!!!!!!! Here's the story in pictures......I've included the photo of the two hawks with talons locked...They were really high in the sky so I don't know if the photo will give you a sense of what was happening. In one of the in-flight photos you can see the new band on the hawk.........Johngarp