Christmas Barred Owl release

A release of a formally injured Barred Owl flying back where it belongs, the Wild  !

Raptor Rehabilitation/A Very Special Eagle

This is a photo of the first wild Bald Eagle I ever participated in caring for. She was a big, beautiful raptor with the attitude that high, acrobatic flyers of nature possess . She came to the World Bird Sanctuary Wildlife hospital after hanging on a trot line over a river. Nerve damage to her wing left her unable to fly. Not one person ever gave up on her and after 18 months she was released back where she belonged, the wild.
If you are curious about the anklets/jesses and nylon line attached to her legs watch the video Scott Smith produced about her that shows more of her very cool, very special story. Just use this link....http://bit.ly/vwjglZ


This photo was taken by the Worlds greatest photographer. My brother, Patrick Lanham

Not these two, no way

I often see ads of grandparents interacting with their grandchildren. The grandmother in her scooter or the grandfather making model airplanes. Not these two, no way !
These two never were indoors very much. Not even when at home. You would find him in his porch swing, her in her garden. These two would have rather stayed outside, out in nature. Both with a fishing pole, and him watching all around him, at beauty he cast his blue eyed gaze upon.
He was a charmer, not a person he couldn't talk to. She a beauty, fashionable even casting her wiggly plastic worms in any hole that would keep some fish.
He knew trees, and plants, and animals,but especially trees. He would point them out. Oak,hickory,dogwood, he knew them all. Not in a lumberjack sort of way. More like a man stepping through the leaves of familiarity. A man who had been away too long, a man who came home.
She loved to cook, sending her grandchildren high into mulberry trees, to pick the ripest for her pies. Her garden was perfect, and she would fish until well after dark, for that Bass that would be battered and fried.
These two never feared nature, but seemed comfortable in it. These two passed along their easy understanding of how to behave and how to not fear. "Never shoot anything just for fun." Animals, birds,squirrels and such. "If you don't bother him, he won't bother you." Speaking of the snake that stumbled upon a young boy as he stumbled upon him in the high grass. They both showed their courage by accelerating to light speed in opposite directions.
These two passed on lessons for a young grandson. Simple truths taught to one of their admirers who could not be happier in the hot summer sun, outside with two people who he found himself later imitating, as he walks quietly amongst the leaves of familiarity, like a man who has come home.
These two are Conrad and Martha Payne, of Owensboro, Kentucky. (Miss you and thanks !)