BELMONT, N.C. -- The Carolina Raptor Center is caring for a bald eaglet that was injured when it fell from its nest in a Belmont neighborhood last Monday during a severe thunderstorm.
Strong winds during the storm on April 3 ripped apart an eagle's nest perched atop a tree, sending the bird several hundred feet to the ground.
Neighbor Minnette Curl has been watching the eagle's nest in her back yard since two eggs hatched in January. She was devastated when she went outside last week and found one of the eaglets on the ground.
"I saw a large shadow at the base of the tree and realized what it was," Curl said.
The eaglet's parents and its sibling were still in the tree above.
"If a bird can limp, it was limping," Curl said.
She called the Carolina Raptor Center for help.
Medical staff examined the eaglet and determined it had a broken pelvis, according to Michelle Miller Houck with the Carolina Raptor Center.
The eaglet was placed in a small aviary at the Carolina Raptor Center for about a week while it healed. Staff fed the eaglet and it healed quickly.
"When they're that young they heal really, really fast," Houck said. "It was eating and getting around well enough that we thought it was ready to go back to the nest."
CRC staff brought the bird back to the area of the nest on Tuesday afternoon.
"We thought it was way more important to try and connect it back with the parents," Houck said.
CRC staff will usually place a bird back in the nest, but this time they couldn't because the nest is too high up in the tree.
For the first time ever, they had to place the bird on the ground.
CRC staff, along with Curl and other neighbors, anxiously watched as the bird sat in an open field across from the nest. It was then moved a little closer to the nest.
As the eaglet sat on the ground near the base of the tree, its parents and sibling watched from above.
One of the eagles left the nest and circled above the eaglet. The eaglet can't fly well yet and just sat on the ground.
Staff later brought the eaglet back to the Carolina Raptor Center in Huntersville where it will be introduced to a flight cage.
"It's a giant cage with one perch on one end and another perch on the other," Houck explained. "Staff will encourage the bird to fly from one end to the other to try and build up the flight muscles."
Staff will try again this weekend to bring the eaglet back to its nest in Belmont in the hope it will fly back to its nest.
