Birds: tame or otherwise (mostly otherwise)

This post is for Kim. Below are three images I took whilst at the Bird Park just outside of Copan. In many ways this park serves as a sanctuary for injured birds or those that had been previously mistreated by owners (and subsequenly rescued) and would not otherwise survive long in the wild.

Obviously the first image is that of a barn owl. We have these here in Virginia so it's not all that exotic of an animal. This was, however, the first opportunity I've had to photograph such a beautiful bird.

This next image is a macaw, the national bird of Honduras. I had the luxury of having my finger grabbed by one of these birds at a section of the park where the birds on display were more or less tame. What the guide failed to tell me was that when holding one of these, keep your fingers closed in a fist, otherwise they might just test your mettle. He/she didn't break the skin but left a rather nasty bruise.

This last image is of some sort of toucan (yeah...I'm about as terrible an ornithologist as I am a botanist). I was allowed to enter its cage for photographic purposes, but after the aforementioned macaw biting, I was a bit skittish around this one. He/she was rather curious about the camera.