Early last month, a young bald eagle made a surprising visit to a South Lake Leelanau neighborhood after it crashed into some trees.

A YOUNG female eagle is steadily gaining strength while staying in a flying enclosure at Wings of Wonder in Kasson Township.

The eagle appeared stunned, and after recovering a bit even walked up to the front porch of Jerry and Betty Scott’s home on S. Sandbar Drive near Cedar to peer through a screen door. Later, the eagle took flight, but its troubles weren’t over.

Three weeks ago, Rebecca Lessard of Wings of Wonder was called to a private resort on South Lake Leelanau where the young, female bald eagle was sitting in the yard of one of the resort’s cabins. Lessard, who is the owner and founder of the group that rehabilitates and returns to the wild injured raptors, said the young eagle wasn’t doing well when she first treated it but reports it is already making improvements.

“She was so malnourished that she didn’t even have the strength to hold her wings tucked up behind her. She was just dragging her wings along the ground,” said Lessard. County emergency services dispatchers had been getting reports about the eagle for about a week before Lessard could finally locate it and take the bird to Wings of Wonder for observation.

Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officer Mike Borkovich, who went to S. Sandbar Drive last month to respond to the eagle in the neighborhood, confirmed it’s the same bird that Lessard is helping.

The good news for the immature, adult eagle, is that after spending 11⁄2-weeks in the Wings of Wonder “hospital” getting vital fluids and nutrition into her body, Lessard is optimistic the raptor will make a complete recovery.

“She is already doing really well. Once we got her back to health, she is flying very well and is back to a normal weight for her age,” Lessard said.

An eagle is physically fully grown after 12 weeks, Lessard said. The parent eagles then usually force immature adults from the nest, where they quickly learn to become scavengers. “They develop their hunting skills while scavenging,” she said.

Lessard said young adult eagles learn their hunting skills during their first winter, after the snow has fallen and all the lakes have frozen. Lessard said eagles will congregate to a river, where immature adults learn the pecking order of eagle society and how to become better hunters while watching.

“They are taught eagle etiquette that first winter and learn the skills to survive and prosper,” she said.

To help the recovering female learn some of that etiquette, Lessard has the young raptor in the same flying enclosure with three other fully grown adults ranging in age from two to 11 years old.

“She is at the bottom of the pecking order and is learning a lot about what she should and should not do,” Lessard said.

As to how and why the eagle was struggling, Lessard theorized that she was the younger of two siblings and the older sibling was stronger. “The parents probably tended to the other sibling more,” she said.

When immature eagles leave the nest, they don’t have a lot of fat deposits and need to eat frequently, Lessard said. Apparently, when the eagle was forced from her nest, she couldn’t find a meal right away. “She dropped too low in weight and each day it became more difficult to find food,” she said.

The lack of hunting skills was apparent to Lessard based on reports she heard about the eagle from county dispatchers. She said there were reports of smaller birds diving at the eagle and driving it away.

“When she was brought in she weighed about 2,500 grams, or a little over five pounds. She should have been 10 or 11 pounds, so she was quite underweight,” Lessard said.

The eagle will continue to learn under its tutors well into the fall. Lessard hopes to release the bird into the wild sometime this winter, when eagles are congregating near rivers and streams.