Bateleur Eagle in North Carolina Zoo

In our past visits to the North Carolina Zoo, we noticed that there was a very special eagle called bateleur eagle. However, we were not able to take some pictures for it. In April 2008 when we visited the zoo again, that display was closed for maintenance unfortunately. On 20th July 2008, we went to the North Carolina Zoo again. The bateleur eagle was there finally. We had determined to take some good shots for it and we did. Here is one of the pictures.

The bateleur eagle is really a beautiful bird. From the sign in the zoo, its life span is around 20 to 40 years, weight 4 to 6 pounds, height from 21 to 27 inches. The sign also says "The bateleur eagle takes its name from the French word meaning acrobat, due to the side-to-side balancing motion it displays when flying." Unfortunately, the eagle we saw was in a not-s0-big cage. We did not think we would be able to see its acrobatic flying ability in it.

When we were in front of the cage, the eagle stayed still most of the time. So, it was not very difficult to find a good angle for the photos. The hard part was actually trying to avoid the wire on the cage net. So, we poked the lens onto the net. The lens was too big that it was not able to get through the hole on the net but it was good enough to avoid any wire on the pictures. Luckily, the eagle was calm enough not coming over to attach the funny looking lens of our camera.