Fallen Angel

The National Eagle Center sits along the banks of the Upper Mississippi River Valley in Wabasha Minnesota. In the winter months, hundreds of bald eagles migrate to this area to find open water on the Mississippi River near Wabasha. In the spring, they nest along the river valley and feed their young from the plentiful fish of the Mississippi River.

Angel came to the National Eagle Center in 2000. She had been found on the ground with a broken wing near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. She was just a fledgling and had been surviving on scraps of fish from nearby herons’ nests. Angel was treated at the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center in St. Paul, where she underwent surgery and realignment of the broken bone in her wing. Though repair of the bone was successful, the damage to the musculature could not be repaired. Angel is unable to sustain flight as she would need to in order to survive in the wild. She now lives at the center. Angel makes startling loud vocalizations when wild eagles pass by above the river.