Where I live they fly over the house all day and some of them get so big they look like aircraft coming in to land! Great story!
We have red tail hawks (quite large birds) that nest behind our house. I admire the the eagles, but watching these birds grow up from babies to adults is more than awesome.
In July, 2004 I was preparing for an open house on a spec house and a youngster landed on our neighbor's deck rail. It had just been "kicked out of the nest" and still had down on its belly.
I had to start the open house late because I spent about 2 hours taking pictures of the bird on the deck. When he/she finally "flew away" it was with a nearly silent swoosh to the cliffs that you can see in the background, probably 1/2 mile away across from our house.
