The Eagle Has (Crash) Landed

Ahh, the eagle. A fierce, noble bird, known for roaming the sky with precision, grace and power.

Except for when it doesn't.

This white-tailed eagle  lives in a spruce tree in the Durbe region of Latvia. Unfortunately for it, the Latvian Fund for Nature has been broadcasting  every move this bird and its family has made, recording as they painstakingly cared for and hatched several eggs. It was all buildup to this one moment of humiliation.

The bird in question is a juvenile, "possibly returning to the nest after a practice flight, and obviously it hasn't mastered the art of a smooth landing just yet," Brian Sullivan, the eBird Project  leader at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology , told The Huffington Post.

"It doesn’t appear to be injured in any way," he added.

In a video of the crash-landing, the embarrassed-looking predator takes a good 20 seconds to regain his composure before awkwardly flopping back into the nest, and into our hearts.

H/T Digg