Amazing trip

His name is HALO because the people who found him decided that he appeared like an angel in their yard. This adult Great Horned Owl was found in the town of Story which is about a four plus hour drive from Cody. Due to our very horrible weather, blizzard conditions making the roads impassable, he was transported to Diane in Gillette for safe keeping until a way was figured out to get him to Cody.

He has a broken right wing which made the transfer more urgent so it could be surgically repaired. Diane and I tried everything we could think of. She finally contacted a firm at the Campbell County airport for help and they certainly went way above and beyond. Flightline agreed to fly the bird here with WGF biologist Erika Peckham accompanying the transfer.

This turned out to be a one and a half hour flight from Gillette to Cody even with the strong winds in our area. Thanks to Ryan for doing such a super job. The other thing they did was to take beautiful PHOENIX, the burned Red-tailed Hawk, back to Diane so she (the bird, not Diane) could be driven to Sheridan for release where she was found.

And thanks to lird Flying Service of Ekalaka, MT, they run Flightline, for donating the cost of the trip to Cody. That saved us many, many hundreds of dollars and has given this beautiful owl a chance to return to the wild if the surgery on the broken wing is successful.

UPDATE: Surgery has been completed and now it's only time that will let me know if it worked out well enough for HALO to fly again. Fingers crossed everyone, okay!