Pallas's Fish-Eagle
Haliaeetus leucoryphus
A pale-headed raptor of inland marshes and lakes. Tends to be uncommon and thinly distributed throughout its range. Adult is dark brown above with a paler belly and dirty-gray head. When in flight from below, a broad white band on the dark tail is the most eye-catching feature. Juveniles have an all-dark tail, but have two bright white panels on the undersides of the wingtips; this patterning can be similar to that of some kites, but the fish-eagle is much larger, with a longer-winged and comparatively shorter-tailed profile.
Identification
The Pallas's fish eagle has a light sandy-brown hood and a whitish face. The wings are darker brown and the back rufous. The long, slender wings (particularly slender for a sea eagle) are rather dark brown underneath. The tail is black with a wide, distinctive white stripe. Juveniles are overall darker, cooler brown with no band on the tail but with several pale areas on the wing, including the underwing coverts and inner primaries. This results in underwings that have a white band in young fish eagles. It takes until the 4th year or so to obtain adult plumage. Among related species,, it mainly overlaps in range with the quite dissimilar much shorter winged and slightly smaller grey-headed fish eagle and scarcely with the larger, bulkier and much broader winged white-tailed eagle, which also seldom resembles the coloring of the Pallas's. This fairly large species measures 72 to 85 cm (28 to 33 in) in length with a wingspan of 180–215 cm (5 ft 11 in – 7 ft 1 in). Females are generally reported to weigh 2.1 to 3.7 kg (4.6 to 8.2 lb), with this sample of nine averaging 3.2 kg (7.1 lb), and are slightly larger than males at 2.03 to 3.3 kg (4.5 to 7.3 lb), in ten that weighed an average of 2.6 kg (5.7 lb). However, in some cases Pallas's fish eagles have been reported to weigh as much as 4 to 5.5 kg (8.8 to 12.1 lb) and span as much as much as 240 cm (7 ft 10 in). Thus, their size falls just slightly under the large northern sea eagles (i.e. bald, white-tailed and Steller's) and broadly similar to slightly larger than the sea eagles of more tropical central distribution.
Taxonomy
Aquila leucorypha was the scientific name proposed by Peter Simon Pallas in 1771, who first described a Pallas's fish eagle that he encountered during his travels in eastern Siberia. In the 19th century, it was also placed in the genera Falco and Haliaeetus by different authors.<p>This species is the hardest-to-place sea-eagle. Among the species of its genus, it has no close living relatives. mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data is unable to reliably suggest a phylogenetic place for it among the sea-eagles. However, some information can be drawn from the molecular data, and especially from morphology and biogeography:<p>This species retains the ancestral dark eye, bill, and talons of the first sea-eagles, shared with the older tropical lineage. It is peculiar insofar as it has a black band at the end of the tail in adult birds, similar to juvenile Madagascar fish eagles (which look like a smaller, darker version of this bird, but are not very closely related). Its distribution indicates that this species evolved fairly independently of other sea-eagle lineages, but the molecular data tentatively suggests it is possibly closer to the Holarctic species. It diverged from its common ancestor with other species soon after the Holarctic and the tropical lineages split. Dependent on the interpretation of a possible Early Oligocene sea-eagle fossil from Egypt, this happened either at the very start or the end of the Oligocene, somewhere between 34 and 25 mya.
- Scientific name
- Haliaeetus leucoryphus
- Authority
- (Pallas, 1771)
- Order
- Accipitriformes
- Family
- Accipitridae
- Genus
- Haliaeetus
Range and habitat
The Pallas's fish eagle occurs in Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan.
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Behavior
Migration pattern: Complete migrants.
Conservation
Population trend: declining.
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
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