I bet not a lot of people know that! 
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Is that a verandah….or has someone blown the bl**dy doors off?
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May the power be with you
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That, is a Redtail Hawk
I used to have one of those.
I worked for a Raptor rescue for a couple of years and she was a rescue that I took under my wing.
She lived to age 26 and was a proper handful😊
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“she was a rescue that I took under my wing”
Like it!!
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Was she badly injured not to be released again?
The Red-tail hawks have a habitat of a few square miles so I am presuming that I keep meeting the same bird on my regular walks.
It is a pretty large bird, most likely a female.
She was a captive bred bird that had a very bad first year culminating in a fractured beak.
Once she was nursed back to health her original owner decided not to have her back.
There followed a series of problems as she matured.
She ended up in an isolation aviary as an adult.
When I got to know her, she was 9 and practically completely wild.
Getting her out and trained etc was painful for both of us, but I had her for just over 16 years and still miss her.
(There is a lot longer version of this story that I wrote for a local paper article which I still have somewhere).
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He was a complex character for sure. He grew up very poor and was estranged from his family at an early age. some days he was so hungry he would stand outside McDonald’s just to smell the burgers cooking. Just my thoughts but he had an acute sense of the value of money, often his musician’s would complain about the amount he would pay them. He would know how much they were spending on the hotel and maybe if it wasn’t what he was expecting he walked away??
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Thank you. Perhaps. Although the exercise probably cost money, the Negresco is a definition of opulence.
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You need to get out and about more Rod!
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Certainly, it was a very different kind of winter’s day in Scotland this Sunday! The forecast was far worse than predicted, with very few of the expected views and no sun at all. This was the pick of the photos, showing the sentinel of Glen Coe, Buchaille Etive Mor, sandwiched between fog layers.
Cheers,
Ian
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I’m actually back in London today! Fortunately December is largely clear for long dog walks, hiking and that seasonal-stuff (which should not be spoken of while it is still November…)
The weather in Hackney is not very Cassis-y.
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WOW!
That’s a fabulous photograph 
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Had to grab the camera quick luckily it was set on a high ISO to get a sharp pic.
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Wonderful shot Ian. It’s my fave Scottish hill…
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