Two adult bald eagles recently “talon-locked” during a mid-air battle in Duluth, Minn. and crash-landed on the Duluth International Airport tarmac. While one bird was able to fly away, the other was severely injured and was taken to The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota for care.

Talon-locking is known to occur among eagles of the same sex during breeding territory battles and among male and female eagles during courtship.

The eagle cared for at The Raptor Center sustained puncture wounds from the second bird’s talons and is expected to recover.

Watch a KARE 11 video featuring The Raptor Center executive director Julia Ponder, D.V.M., and the bald eagle patient here.

The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine will release rehabilitated raptors back to the wild this Saturday, May 4 at the Hyland Lake Park Reserve in Bloomington, Minn. The free and public event will run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. with interpretative programming beginning at noon.

Event-goers are invited to meet some of The Raptor Center’s education birds and watch the release of other rehabilitated birds back to the wild. The all-ages event will have family-friendly activities including nature and craft projects available throughout the day.

Please bring used ink-jet printer cartridges to the event for The Raptor Center’s Recycling for Raptors program. Photography is allowed. However, for the safety of the raptors, no pets are permitted.

For more information, contact The Raptor Center at 612-624-4745. We’ll see you there!

Many diseases and infections come to humans from wildlife. So what are we doing to try to prevent the spread? Which animals should we be wary of…and why?

Defining the risk of the international wildlife trade is challenging, but the stakes for controlling the trade and mitigating its dangers will be critical to protecting humans from emerging disease.

Many organizations and some federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have expressed concern that pathogens entering the country through the wildlife trade could potentially make the jump to humans, morphing into something more troublesome.

As the days continue to get longer, The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota anticipates the upcoming raptor baby season.

Learn what you can do if you find a baby raptor on the ground or perched on an unusual structure.

According to the Minnesota Daily and Star Tribune, the Midwest peregrine falcon population has been on the rise over the past three decades, thanks in large part to two University of Minnesota faculty members…

Dr. Julia Ponder, executive director of the University of Minnesota Raptor Center, is traveling to the Galápagos Islands to support efforts to restore an endangered Giant Tortoise population. In this series of journal entries originally posted on The Raptor Center’s blog, Dr. Ponder will share her experiences over the course of two months. For background on her trip, click here to read or here to watch a video, and be sure to check back in to Health Talk to follow the project!

I wanted to share a couple of other stories with you. It is worth noting that in addition to the current work on Pinzon, the team in Galapagos also did follow-up work on the islands that underwent rodent eradication in January 2011. The results of that work were quite exciting. In addition to confirming that the rodents are gone, members of the monitoring team also documented the presence of two species – a land snail and a gecko – that were previously thought to be extinct. Both of these species, which have been looked for in the past, were found this year on the island of Rabida; presumably their populations are growing thanks to the removal of rodent predation …