Somewhere in the dark rainforest of Mt. Apo, the tallest mountain in the Philippines, an endangered monkey-eating eagle sits on her nest atop a towering limestone cliff.

Ten-year-old Aska from the Bagobo tribe, the pre-historic keepers of the rainforest, tries to shoo the eagle away with her slingshot, but the nest is beyond her reach. The eagle recently killed one of her family's chickens. She gets her father's .22-caliber rifle and takes potshots at her every day but always misses. The eagle is too far up and will not budge, defying the echoing ricocheting bullets, standing her ground to protect her one-year-old baby.

Later, her dad forbids her to shoot because they are running out of bullets. So, she is left to observe the eagle through her dad's binoculars. Seeing the fierce face of the eagle at extreme closeup, Aska is struck with awe and falls in love with the eagle. Every day, she watches her.

Aska notices that the eagle often softly nudges her baby. She knew the mother eagle was teaching her baby to flex its wings. After about a month of flexing, Aska is shocked when the eagle pushes her baby off the cliff. In the blink of an eye, by pure instinct, the baby eagle spreads her wings and soars. In a split second, she learns how to fly. Aska screams in delight. Baby eagles sometimes die on their first flight because their wings are too weak to get them airborne.

Aska steals a chicken from the family's coop, kills it, waves it to the eagle, and places it on top of a boulder. The eagle swoops down and takes it up to her nest. They become instant friends.

One day, a baby wild boar strays into the clearing. The eagle swoops down and kills it. It is too heavy to bring up to the nest, so the eagle eats as much as she can. Aska watches her close-up and learns the meaning of regurgitation to feed the baby eagle.

DAD: Stop feeding the eagle, Aska.

ASKA: But she's hungry and has to feed her baby.

DAD: If you feed her, she will stop hunting because she will depend on you. You are destroying her ability to survive on her own. When you are gone, she and her baby may die.