Eagle Owl Take Off

Milky Eagle Owl Taking Off, Zoo Atlanta, Atlanta, GA (November 2010)

This was another bird that participated in the bird show at Zoo Atlanta. It's a very big bird and amazing to watch in flight. During the show they have it swoop over the audience to different perches and you definitely need to duck when it passes over. It gets rewarded with a (dead) mouse near the end of its part of the show. You can see the jess on its left ankle.

I don't usually do anything to my pictures other than cropping and resizing for upload, but in this case I wanted to remove the background. I used GIMP, but I think I need to investigate a better way to do that since I used the old style of pixel painting (and inexpertly at that).

Edit: Many thanks to Wingnut55 here on DA who pointed out this is a Milky Eagle Owl and not a barred owl as I had originally labeled it.