At Piedmont Wildlife Center, we get thousands of calls each year. Calls about eagles always bring much excitement and sometimes much amusement. One caller warned us before bringing in "a baby eagle." When the delivery arrived, we donned our heavy gloves for protection and opened to box to discover a dove chick.

Doves do have a beak and feathers, but that's about where the similarities to eagles stop.

More frequently people mistake red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) for eagles. In North Carolina, bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) are much less common than red-tailed hawks.

The confusion with red-tailed hawks is more understandable. Red-tails and eagles are large birds (though eagles are as much as two to five times larger) and leave the nest as adult-sized, mottled-brown birds three or four months after hatching.

The red-tail is commonly confused with the eagle on movie sets as well. The screaming cry heard in every movie scene showing an eagle soaring overhead is actually the call of the red-tailed hawk (much more imposing than the thin whistle emitted by our national emblem).

The important message though, is not to distinguish between one bird and another, but to know that all animals in our area share a need for assistance in dealing with human imposed difficulties. And the Piedmont Wildlife Center is just a call away: (919) 572-9453.