The magnificent intricacy of flight

It was late when I visited Ronni Bennet’s Time Goes By last night, and I completely overlooked this exquisite video of a Eurasian eagle owl in flight. It’s filmed in HD high-speed and you can see the angle and flutter of Every. Single. Feather. as the bird nears its target — a chicken leg in his handler’s gloved hand. Full screen viewing a must!

and a slightly different angle:

The source, identified only as “TurbaryWoods,” used a Photron Full HD High Speed Camera SA2. There are more high-speed videos on his YouTube channel. He notes that, regrettably, the compression of the original, very lengthy high-speed film to a format suitable for YouTube compromises the quality of the images. Imagine what the original must look like!

TurbaryWoods says of his owl, Checkers: “I hatched him myself in an incubator, his parents were abandoned and now live at my owl sanctuary, google ‘turbary woods’ for more pics and facts.” Checkers was trained for eight days to snatch the chicken leg from his handler’s hand.

Turbary Woods is a raptor sanctuary in the U.K.