Soaring with the eagle

How cool is this?

Trapped in his tiny dark cell, Sampson broke every feather in his wings and tail trying to escape. Mr Marshall took him in, spent four months nursing him back to health, and gradually trained him to sit on his falconer’s gloved hand. “Over the time it took him to recover we built up a bond of trust and went hunting together like a pair of golden eagles would do in the wild,” Marshall said yesterday. “But I was on the ground with a leather glove while he was in the air. I just wanted to be up there with him; it was a natural progression for me.”

Over six more months, and using copious rabbit meat bait, Mr Marshall, from Barnstaple, Devon, finally coaxed Sampson to follow his microlight into the air and to fly alongside it.

UPDATE: Just for clarity, Sampson is a golden eagle, and soaring with the eagles is a rare thing nowadays.