There was a rather unusual crash landing last Sunday at the Duluth International Airport in Minnesota, but it didn’t involve aircraft. Instead, two bald eagles who were fighting in midair had locked their talons together and could not separate before crashing onto the pavement:
According to Randy Hanzal, a Minnesota conservation officer who took the above pictures, mature eagles will sometimes fight over territories by crashing into each other and grabbing an intruding eagle with their talons. Usually, the eagles will let go before hitting the ground, but in this case, they had their talons so deeply imbedded in together, they could not let go of each other.
Hanzal said the two eagles were remarkably calm. So he loaded both into the back of his truck because he had no container big enough to put them in and covered them with blankets and jackets. However and half way to a rehab center, he heard a ruckus and turned around to see feathers flying and one eagle on the back of his tailgate. That eagle flew away while the other one decided to hang around for some antibiotics, fluids and pain medication as he or she (its apparently hard to tell what sex an eagle is) had one deep abdominal puncture along with other puncture wounds around the legs.