#055-365 Closely Cropped

This is partly in a fashion trying to make amends to Terri (top5cats) for some of the (Funny Comments) I made on her last post of a magnificent shot of two gorgeous Bald Eagles, which because of the close cropping, to show the birds at a decent size, had the appearance that they were tightly enclosed. Happily they weren't, they had flying difficulty but a large area to enjoy. As does this guy (I admit I stole Terri's idea - so sue me) I called this shot Closely Cropped for two reasons, yes it it as close as I could get the subject and still have it identifiable. The second is that as a small fledgling this beautiful bird suffered a mishap involving a rat trap and would not survive in the wild.

The bird is a White Breasted Sea Eagle which in a way makes it closely related to the American Bald Eagle, primarily a Fish Eagle too. The poor bird lost half of one of its talons in the rat trap and thereby would not survive in the wild as they need both talons to grasp the fish they catch and eat. This particular bird has a large cage too, but has the added benefit of being part of the Free Flying display, staged twice a day by the curators at Taronga Park Zoo. The main handler said that this bird had been a part of the show for so long he thought he ran the show. And boy did he show a ton of attitude, not wanting to co-operate and seemingly luxuriating in the freedom of the outdoors. Which drew no complaints for us watching as it was obvious that he loved being out of the cage, but made absolutely no break for freedom, he knew where his next meal was coming from.

This is not uncommon, I have made past reference to my involvement with Corporal Courage, the Mascot of the Royal Australian Armoured Corps 2nd Cavalry Regiment. She made many a dash for freedom from her "Barrack Area" mostly foiled by a trailing ankle chain and loosely strung telephone wires connecting the Troop Headquarters, but on one occasion the chain separated near the ankle (I don't know if birds have ankles-but you know what I mean) and she was FREE. She wasn't wild though and had never hunted and about three and a half weeks later she walked back into camp and I spotted her just as I was going on sentry duty, I got a relief and we took her to a vet, who stated that she was starving but other than being dirty and tick infested, she would recover well.

This led to the most embarrassing incident in my entire Military career (I wonder if the Army thinks of it as a Military Career or just a period of administrative liability?). They decided to Court Martial her for desertion and I had to carry her, through the proceedings. The Squadron Sergeant Major, kept calling for me to lower my hand from my eyes, while he tried to control his mirth, but my goodness the channel 7 Television Cameras were rolling and, I didn't want to be a part of this Military farce, they found her guilty and demoted her back to Trooper Courage. When she passed away she had been reinstated and in fact had been promoted to Sergeant, but by then, I had moved on to Military Intelligence (The penultimate Oxymoron). The point of this is to relate, that, from that point on we didn't need the ankle chain she would never have left again..

Have a look at Terris blog though it is a great shot.