It’s a great moment in wildlife that is interrupted by an explosion on the battlefield.

A female bald eagle sits on a snag near the Stearns Lake nest, where she and a partner have successfully raised young eagles for years. She keeps an eye on a red-tailed hawk that has just arrived on a branch even closer to the nest – it turns out the hawk had chosen a bad time to explore the neighborhood.

Because then the nest explodes in a fireball worthy of a Hollywood stunt. A lightning strike, captured by a trail camera from 500 meters away, disintegrates the eagle’s nest, causing both the eagle and the hawk to dangle upside down and stun in an electric shock.

Boulder County Open Space officials and longtime eagle watchers have never seen anything like the Aug. 6 fireworks display at the Carolyn Holmberg Preserve. They were equally surprised by the next few minutes of the video: the eagle suddenly flaps its wings, drops to another branch to shake off the explosion, and then flies away.

“I couldn’t believe she survived,” said Dana Bove, a Colorado attorney and volunteer with the nonprofit Front Range Nesting Bald Eagle Studies, which tracks breeding pairs in local open spaces.

Parental pairs stay together for years and often build new nests near their last location at this time of year. The recovering eagle and her mate were spotted by volunteers and Boulder County officials searching for nesting sites and looking for prairie dog snacks from light poles at Monarch High School and the old StorageTek complex.

Now Boulder County will close a trail in the Carolyn Holmberg Preserve starting Oct. 15, for months if necessary, to give the pair of eagles the space and peace they need to rebuild near the exploded nest. This year’s eaglet fledged long ago and went its own way, Bove said, but the eaglet’s parents are now behind in preparing for next spring.

Bove wants local officials to go further in supporting the pair of eagles and other nesting birds of prey that hunt in the Rock Creek corridor and near Stearns Lake.

Developers are digging up prairie dog towns that provide more than half of the eagles’ food, Bove said. And observers have seen the troubled couple searching for a new hook and considering a building site, Bove said, only to see them scared off by a passing cyclist or hiker.

Open space and land use officials can do better, Bove said, “if you value these birds that are still under federal protection and if you don’t want to drive them out of an area.”

Watch the full video