Observing

I went to the Cascade Raptor Center last Saturday with Mark.  What struck me the most is how Mark spends from five to ten minutes just looking at one bird.  It's a long, steady look.  He stands aside in one spot and is still while other Center goers ebb and flow around him.   All that time, he's looking at the raptor; watching it sometimes stare back, or swoop to a new perch, or how it might ruffle out or smooth down its feathers.  Whereas someone like me looks at the snapshot patterns of the feathers, the curve of the beak, or the configuration of talons, Mark is collecting a long exposure picture of the animated whole.  

The Center has been moving various residents around, so we missed Archimedes the Snowy Owl and Dante the Golden Eagle.   Most of the other residents were in their usual aviaries. 

We saw one of the newer additions to the resident population:  Nyx, a barred owl.  She was brought to the Center with a head trauma after a collision with a car (very common with owls).  The Center had to teach her how to be an owl, how to strike food, and even what food was.  When we saw her, she was bathing.  

What struck me this time around was how the raptors resembled or differed from various Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs:   𓄿   𓅐   𓅓   Mostly, I was looking at leg feathers and (surprise) profiles.  I have a fantasy of using the Cascade Raptor Center residents as models for a rendering of some sort of inscription, but so far it's just a fantasy.