Aigle criard

Identification

The greater spotted eagle is rather large and compact. Normally, it is black-brown with a contrasting yellow beak. This species has a short neck with a large and often shaggy-naped head, a strong beak, and a short gape-line with round nostrils. The wings are broad and long, reaching the tail tip. The tail is relatively short and rounded. The overall effect of the broad wings and short tail can give them an almost vulture-like silhouette. The feet are large, and the feathers covering the legs are less compactly arranged than on lesser spotted eagles.<p>Greater spotted eagles tend to perch in the open. Most perches are on treetops at a forest edge, or more isolated vantage points such as a bush, utility pole, or steep riverbank. It is not uncommon for greater spotted eagles to forage from the ground, or rest there in a somewhat hunched posture. <p>Adult greater spotted eagles are generally a rather uniform dark to blackish brown, though the coloration may appear purplish and glossy. They may appear more starkly contrasted when freshly moulted. <p>The upperwing covert feathers are often a shade paler than the rest, though these eagles generally appear uniformly dark with two contrasting features: a pale beak and a narrow white U above the tail, though the latter is usually concealed at rest. The species is sexually dimorphic or even polymorphic. Pale and intermediate phenotypes are rare, although they can be slightly more common in eastern ranges. <p>Pale adults, sometimes referred to as Clanga clanga fulvescens, have bicolored plumage. The tail, flight feathers, and greater wing coverts are all blackish, with the body and the rest of the wing coverts appearing light yellow or pale golden buff, sometimes becoming creamy when aged. The buff colour of the fulvescens phenotype is usually contrasted with diffuse dark coloring around the eyes, on the leading edges of wings, and more rarely and sparsely on the chest. Intermediate and other variants are very rare, but include those with a slightly paler body and variable yellowish-brown streaking or mottling on the fore upperwing coverts (which can make them look similar to juvenile lesser spotted eagles), or mottled yellow-brown with a dark-streaked breast and pale-tipped wing coverts (like the juvenile eastern imperial eagle (Aquila heliaca)). These intermediate types may show the typical dark brown to black on the upper body, but in flight display pale mottled grey wing linings, or even normal coloration apart from the contrasting paler underbody.<p>The juvenile greater spotted eagle is generally uniformly black-brown with whitish to yellowish drop-shaped spots. Some juveniles appear heavily spotted all over, while others are less so. They always show an obvious row of spots along the upperwing coverts, forming clear wing bars tail and flight feathers, except the outer primaries. Juveniles' feathers underneath are often broadly cream-tipped, often showing some buffy streaks below, especially on the flanks and trousers. In fulvescens-type greater spotted eagles, juveniles are like the pale adult but show the typical heavily spotted wings and tail of typical juveniles, and often show some darker centers to the scapulars and median coverts. By the second to third year, the plumage is often considerably worn but white tips still create sufficiently prominent wing bars (unlike in lesser spotted eagles) until the second winter, when most coverts are then newly molted with smaller pale tips. From about the middle of third year onwards, the plumage is more adult-like with few or no indistinct spots left, but remiges are of unequal age and untidy looking. The subadult is generally more uniform in color, but often still shows some pale tips to the greater coverts. Maturity is obtained by about the fifth year, though sometimes they may not breed until the sixth. The bare parts change little in color at different ages, with eyes being dark brown, while the beak and feet are yellow in all ages. <p>In flight, this is a large, dark raptor (often looking bigger than its true size) with a well-protruding head, long wings (which often look shorter due to their broadness), slightly bulging secondaries, and rather squared seven-finger tips, although juvenile wings can look more rounded. On the wing, greater spotted eagles appear heavy-bodied, often appearing suspended below the wings and with a relatively short, broad tail. They have quick wing beats with little upstroke and appear to have comparatively lighter flight actions than steppe eagles (Aquila nipalensis), but appear somewhat heavier, less graceful, and less Buteo-like than lesser spotted eagles. Greater spotted eagles soar on almost flat wings, with hands often slightly lowered and their primaries well spread. When gliding, the wings are bowed with a clear angle between arms and hands, emphasizing the wings' short look.<p>On their upperwings, greater spotted eagles variably show a pale primary patch formed mainly by white based shafts and partially pale outer webs. This is seen at all ages but is much smaller and less obvious on adults. The underwing almost invariably has a single white crescent formed by the white base of the outermost three primaries, the secondaries, and the innermost primaries. At close range, nine to eleven dense narrow dark bars fading toward wing tips are visible. When seen in flight, the normal adult is uniformly blackish with a faint pale U above the tail, barely paler wing coverts, and paler quills. It is not unusual for adults to have slightly paler wing linings, similar to lesser spotted eagles, but only a single (not double) whitish crescent at the base of primaries. In fulvescens (pale) morph adults, most of the wing coverts on both surfaces and body are contrastingly buffy to tawny.<p>Juveniles on the wing normally appear very dark with liberal spotting above and below, though some juveniles appear with spots restricted to wings, scapulars, and trousers. All juveniles, when seen well, show characteristic white end spots on wing coverts forming two to three wing bars. Otherwise, the juvenile has a creamy trailing edge to the wings and tail. Below, juvenile greater spotted eagles have largely black (apart from the creamy crissum) wing linings contrasting with paler grayer-soot flight feathers. Other juvenile plumages are variably paler but with quills as those of a typical juvenile.<p>Birds that breed in the Volga–Ural area are slightly larger and more muted in plumage characteristics. Slightly smaller individuals seem to be prevalent farther west in Europe. There appears to be a near 5% size difference in favor of Indian wintering birds over Middle Eastern ones.<p>The greater spotted eagle is a medium-sized eagle, but also a large raptor. This species shows strong sexual dimorphism in favor of the female in size, though the plumage is similar between sexes. The size difference is up to 26% linearly, and females can be as much as twice as heavy as the males, making them rival the martial eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) as possibly the most sexually dimorphic member of the Aquilinae. However, the largest male greater spotted eagles can overlap in most linear and mass measurements with smaller females. The total length of full-grown greater spotted eagles can vary from 59 to 74 cm (23 to 29 in). In wingspan, males have been reported to measure 155–177 cm (61–70 in) while females can measure 167–185 cm (66–73 in). Body mass for males has been reported to range from 1,537 to 2,000 g (3.389 to 4.409 lb), while females range from 1,820 to 3,250 g (4.01 to 7.17 lb). Among standard measurements, wing chord can range 477–519 mm (18.8–20.4 in) in males and 507–545 mm (20.0–21.5 in) in females. The shortish tail varies 227–249 mm (8.9–9.8 in) in males and 235–268 mm (9.3–10.6 in) in females. The fairly long tarsus is 97–105 mm (3.8–4.1 in) in males and 96–112 mm (3.8–4.4 in) in females. Reportedly, the culmen length can range from 32.5 to 39 mm (1.28 to 1.54 in).<p>The greater spotted eagle is quite noisy when breeding and is often very vocal in winter, especially when in small loose flocks. The most common call, often heard during intraspecies conflicts, is a soft, one-syllable, penetrating, high-pitched, urgent whistle, variously transcribed as kyack, kluh, tyuck, or dyip. The call is not unlike that of lesser spotted eagles but is slightly deeper and more ringing. The calls are higher pitched than steppe eagles' and much higher pitched than those of the eastern imperial eagles (Aquila heliaca), the latter having a guttural call somewhat reminiscent of a frog. Additionally, a similar three-syllable bark is seemingly used to warn off intruders at a feeding site, sometimes considered a harsh chrr-chrr-chaa-chaa, kyak-yak-yak, and kyew-kyew-kyew. The cumulative effect of the repeated call has been compared to that of a "small hound". As with many raptors, the female’s tone is lower pitched and hoarser. One individual greater spotted eagle recorded over two days was found to utter an unusual ringing call that sounded remarkably similar to the first two syllables of the typical call of the crested serpent eagle (Spilornis cheela).<p>Field identification of greater spotted eagle can be quite difficult. This species is primarily differentiated from lesser spotted eagles by its structure and proportions, though distant birds may be practically indistinguishable. Compared to the lesser spotted eagle, the adult appears very broad winged, which in turn makes the head look relatively small. However, greater spotted juveniles can appear less bulky, narrower, more rounded along the wing, and longer-tailed, making their proportions closer to the lesser.<p>Greater spotted eagles can be clearly larger in size, with females effectively dwarfing most lesser spotted eagles, but there is a broad size overlap between the two species. In some cases, male greater spotted eagles can be scarcely any larger than male lesser spotted eagles. Side-by-side, greater spotted eagles are typically conspicuously darker than lesser spotted eagles, and notable for their dark uppertail coverts, lack of nape patch, blackish-brown uniform arms, and uniform, dark upperwing coverts (not contrastingly rusty brownish). Although difficult, intermediate greater spotted eagles can be distinguished from young lesser spotted eagles by the former's morphology, usually darker wing linings, and differences in appearance of primary patch and carpal arc. The juvenile usually lacks the pale nape patch of the lesser spotted eagle, but it is sometimes present, "albeit only slightly paler than rest of plumage and never ochre or orange". Typically, the spotting and barring pattern is much stronger in juvenile greater spotted eagles, but this is not always reliable.<p>Hybrids of the two spotted eagles can be more difficult to distinguish, and are often muddled and varied in appearance, with some hybrids being much closer in appearance to one species or the other. Pure greater spotted eagles can be told from pure lesser spotted eagles via in-hand measurements such as bill height, width and extent of white spots on the juvenile, and the length of middle toe.<p>The greater spotted eagle on the Indian subcontinent might be confused with Indian spotted eagles. The Indian species is smaller (similar in size to the lesser spotted eagle), somewhat narrower-winged and longer-tailed, with primary fingers more deeply cut and square-ended. The Indian species has a more distinct pale window in primaries, paler and less distinctly streaked underparts, and paler upperparts (more like a steppe eagle in color) with less distinct, more diffuse pale tips to the larger wing-coverts. Furthermore, the Indian spotted eagle has a notably deeper gape extending behind its eye.<p>Compared to non-spotted eagles of similar or larger sizes, the greater spotted eagle tends to be fairly compact in features with proportionately broad (and short-looking) wings, a shortish tail, and an overall darker and distinctly patterned plumage. The steppe eagle is similar to but larger and bulkier than the greater spotted eagle, which has a shorter neck, smaller bill with a shorter gape line, no pale nape patch (seen in adult steppe), narrower and less baggy trousers, and generally much shorter, slightly broader wings. Although visually similar at a distance, the steppe eagle has bolder, more extensive barring on the greyer flight feathers, complete lack of carpal arcs below, paler throat and nape, and larger but more diffuse primary patch.<p>Greater spotted eagles of the fulvescens and intermediate morphs resemble a large number of eagles, but can be distinguished by underwing colour and pattern—such as their distinct carpal arc and dark, thinly barred quills—from pale or intermediate morphs of the similarly sized tawny eagle (Aquila rapax), which is usually less darkly backed without a defused dark face and possesses more typical, narrower wing proportions. Juveniles of the eastern imperial eagle can resemble fulvescens greater spotted eagles but are larger and appear structurally different. The imperial has much longer and narrower wings, a longer neck, a bigger, more prominent beak with an oblong (rather than oval) nail, a longer and narrower gape line, more conspicuous pale inner primaries, no carpal arc, a brown-streaked breast (though greater spotteds can show some diffuse marks), unmarked tarsal feathering, pale irides, and an obvious pale window on inner primaries. Beyond structural dissimilarities, subadult steppe eagles can be distinguished from paler morph greater spotted eagles by the former's thicker well-spotted quill bars and paler underwing diagonal. In the eastern portion of range, they can be told apart from the even darker black eagle, which is much slimmer and has paddle-shaped wings and a long and clearly barred tail.

Taxonomie

Greater spotted eagles are members of the Aquilinae, or "booted eagles", subfamily, a monophyletic group within the larger Accipitridae family. All booted eagles have feathers covering their legs. Members of this diverse, wide-ranging family may be found on every continent except Antarctica. Thirty-eight species of booted eagle are recognized. <p>Booted eagles are often grouped with the genera Buteo and Haliaeetus, and other more heavy-set Accipitridae, but they may be more closely related to the slenderer accipitrine hawks than previously believed. The greater spotted eagle's closest living relative is the lesser spotted eagle. They are believed to have diverged from their most recent common ancestor around the middle Pliocene, approximately 3.6 million years ago (mya). This "proto-spotted eagle" probably lived in the general region of modern-day Afghanistan, and split into northern and southern lineages when both glaciers and deserts advanced in Central Asia at the start of the last ice age. The northern lineage subsequently separated into the greater (eastern) and lesser (western) spotted eagle species of today, probably around the Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary, almost 2 mya.<p>Spotted eagles were classified as part of the genus Aquila, along with several other mostly large, brownish eagles. However, molecular phylogenetic studies using one mitochondrial and two nuclear gene sequences showed that the spotted eagles form a monophyletic group with each other and the long-crested eagle (Lophaetus occipitalis). Studies suggest that the spotted eagles should be grouped with Lophaetus, or that all of these species should be grouped within Aquila. Furthermore, a close relationship has been found between the spotted eagles and the black eagle (Ictinaetus malaiensis) native to Asia. The spotted eagles, long-crested eagle, and black eagle may comprise a species complex or clade. The spotted eagles were ultimately reclassified as a distinct genus, Clanga, due to overwhelming genetic evidence and large divergences in morphology and ecology between spotted eagles and their sister taxa. The scientific name Clanga may derive from Ancient Greek κλαγγή (lit. 'scream'), or its root may be the Greek word klangos (a variant form of plangos) for "a kind of eagle" as mentioned by Aristotle.<p>Extensive hybridization between the greater spotted eagle and the lesser spotted eagle occurs perhaps because the two species have one of the closest relationships of any closely studied Accipitrid taxa, despite significant genetic differences. The mitochondrial genetic sequences of these species have more than 3% divergence, about twice what is considered the minimum genetic difference to distinguish two species. A third spotted eagle, the Indian spotted eagle (Clanga hastata), was recognized as a distinct species from the similarly-sized lesser spotted eagle in 2006.

Nom scientifique

Clanga clanga

Autorité

(Pallas, 1811)

Ordre

Accipitriformes

Famille

Accipitridés

Genre

Clanga

Répartition et habitat

This raptor breeds primarily in the Palearctic and the Indomalayan regions. It also breeds in central and southeastern Europe; however, it is highly restricted to small, non-contiguous pockets in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Hungary. A more continuous breeding range begins in Eastern Europe and includes the eastern parts of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and central Belarus. An uncertain number of breeding birds spill over into the edge of eastern Finland. They are found broadly throughout European Russia, where habitat is favorable up through much of Arkhangelsk Oblast to as far as the lower coasts of the White Sea. They are found across much of Central Russia, with their probable northern limits being in Shuryshkarsky and Pitkyarantsky Districts. They are also found in a broad strip across southern Siberia reaching well into the Amur region. Their range outside Russia includes much of northern Kazakhstan, with isolated breeding areas known in the East Kazakhstan Region and in southern Kazakhstan. Greater spotted eagles also breed in an isolated area reaching from Kyrgyzstan and adjacent areas of Russia down to Xinjiang in China. At times, greater spotted eagles have been known to breed in the Indian subcontinent, reportedly from Gujarat northwards to Punjab, with recorded breeding as far south as Saurashtra and as far north as Maharashtra. However, this may only be historical, and there is almost certainly not a stable breeding population today. They also breed in northern Mongolia, and rather far into Northeastern China and northern North Korea.<p>Greater spotted eagles disperse widely during migration, usually through September to November in the fall, and February to April in the spring. They are found more widely during migration than during breeding or wintering. While migrating, greater spotted eagles may be seen in much of Eastern Europe, Anatolia, and throughout the Middle East, Central Asia (from Kazakhstan south), and western South Asia.<p>This species is prone to vagrancy, and has been reported in several countries in Europe including the Netherlands, Great Britain, Gibraltar, and the Czech Republic. Its regular breeding range no longer extends as far westwards as Germany, but birds are still occasionally seen there with a few records per decade. Young birds also disperse widely; the Staatliches Museum für Tierkunde Dresden has a specimen (C 21845) shot in November 1914 near Bernsdorf in Saxony. It is a juvenile, and though its exact age cannot be determined, it is heavily spotted and probably less than 20 months old.<p>Additionally, vagrancy has been reported in Africa, including in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Botswana. It is sometimes documented in central and east Afghanistan. They also may also be found in East Asia across the southern part of the Russian Far East, eastern China, and occasionally in Southeast Asia from Myanmar and Thailand down through the Malay Peninsula. Occasionally, greater spotted eagles are documented even in Indonesia (i.e. Sumatra).<p>Dedicated wintering areas tend to be more limited and isolated than their range during migration. The central wintering areas are principally the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East, and the Indomalayan realm. Small pockets may exist in southwestern Spain and bordering Portugal, South France, northeastern Italy, western Greece (where it is sometimes considered the most common wintering eagle), small areas of southern Bulgaria, eastern Romania, and southern Moldova. Other wintering areas including northeastern Egypt, southern Sudan and adjacent South Sudan, north-central Ethiopia, and scattered areas of the Middle East including northern Israel, Kuwait, and central Syria. More continuously, they are found through much of the southern coastal Arabian Peninsula, including broadly along the Red Sea coast in Saudi Arabia, west and southern Yemen, southern Oman, coastal United Arab Emirates, and eastern Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, they winter in southeastern Turkey, Azerbaijan, southeastern Georgia, eastern Iraq, broadly in western, northern and eastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, western Afghanistan, and far western Pakistan. They are also found discontinuously in eastern Pakistan, northern India, Bangladesh, southern Bhutan, and into northwestern Myanmar. In India, the winter range is through the Indo-Gangetic Plain to Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal to Assam (including the North Cachar hills), and northeastern hill states extending south through central India. They were once reasonably common in the Malabar and Carnatic coasts but likely only before a hundred years ago. After another gap, they are found in much of southern and central Myanmar, central and southern Thailand, southern Laos, the northern tip of Vietnam, discontinuously in southeastern Vietnam and much of Cambodia, and southern coastal Malaysia. In China, wintering greater spotted eagles range from Jiangsu and Anhui continuously down to northern Guangdong across to Taiwan, and rarely in Korea.<p>Greater spotted eagles are found in open wet forests and forest edges, often adjoining marshes, swampy patches, bogs, or wet meadows, as well as river-valley woodlands and floodplain forests. They are generally found in wetlands more often than lesser spotted eagles, but can be found in drier hillside forests in Central Asia. The difference in habitat preferences between these species was confirmed in northeastern Poland, where greater spotted eagles nested in wooded areas on floodplains with considerably more annual flooding than those nested in by lesser spotted eagles.<p>Although typically scarce while breeding in areas modified by heavy human development, they have been seen hunting over cultivated land in Estonia and migrating over lowland farms in the Czech Republic. In Russia, they are found in transition zones between taiga forest and open steppe (often around river valleys), in pine forests, near dwarf forests, in wet, wooded areas of the steppe, and in forested swamps. In Kazakhstan, riparian forests in lowland steppes and forest-steppes mosaics are their primary habitat.<p>In winter, much like during breeding, they usually occur in wetter habitats than most other eagles, including forested river deltas, mangrove forests, marshes, lakeshores, and, in India especially, jheels. However, greater spotted eagles have also been documented in semi-arid Acacia savannas in northeastern Africa. Reportedly in Eritrea, they occur in open moorland, around villages, and lowland grasslands, while in Sudan they are usually in shrubby areas. One seen wintering in Ankara, Turkey, was in an upland forest area. In the Mediterranean Basin, a study found that the preferred habitats of wintering greater spotted eagles were salt marshes and coastal lagoons with freshwater areas. They are not uncommon in paddy fields and sometimes garbage dumps in Asia during winter, being much more adaptable to human-modified areas in this season, though by and large prefer assorted wetlands, mudflats, large rivers, estuaries, and mangroves. In Arabia, they are largely found now in manmade habitats—such as sewage farms, reservoirs, and agricultural land—since the native mangrove and Phragmites reed-beds that once lined the coastal bays have been almost entirely eliminated. In southern Iran, they are usually found in mangrove areas. A key habitat in Iraq is the Mesopotamian Marshes. Wintering habitats in Israel are the wettest available valleys and damp open zones, chiefly cultivated fields and fishponds near patches of trees, with similar habitats used in Oman.<p>Greater spotted eagles are typically found from sea level to 300 m (980 ft) and are characteristically a lowland bird. However, they have been recorded at elevations up to 4,000 m (13,000 ft) in northern Iran. One greater spotted eagle was recorded on migration at 4,370 m (14,340 ft) in Ladakh in the Himalayas.

Aire de reproduction

PAL : c Europe to e Siberia and n China

Aire hors reproduction

sw Asia, ne AF, OR

Migration

Complete migrants

Conservation

Despite maintaining a fairly vast breeding range—covering at least 9 million square kilometres in a band from the Baltic Sea in Europe eastward to the Pacific Ocean with minor outposts in the Indian subcontinent—this eagle occurs at extremely low densities. In essentially every nation of its distribution, the greater spotted eagle is classified as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN. <p>Populations and trends of the species have been considered rather poorly studied in the past, but a strong declining trend has been detected. Rough estimates in the 1990s indicated 11 pairs in a huge area of around 2,000 km2 (770 sq mi) in northeastern Poland, and only 20–30 pairs in an area of 85,000 km2 (33,000 sq mi) in European Russia, with no more than 900 pairs west of the Urals. More refined subsequent efforts put the number of breeding pairs in the European Union at 810–1,100 breeding pairs. <p>Furthermore, in the 1990s, it was extrapolated from Indian wintering populations that the more eastern population is surely less than four figures. Birdlife International in the 1990s estimated the Russian population at 2,800–3,000 pairs. More recently, Birdlife has estimated the global population as no more than 3,800–13,200 total mature individuals worldwide. <p>A color-banding recovery study determined that of 1,370 European banded recoveries of spotted eagles, only 3.6% were greater spotted eagles, while hybrids of lesser and greater spotteds comprised 2.7%, and the remaining were all lesser spotted eagles. Greater spotted eagles are considered extripated as a breeding species from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic (where they may have never consistently bred), and Slovakia, as well as Israel where they last bred in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Finland breeding population is also likely almost gone. <p>Steady reduction in Ukraine down to 40–50 pairs by 1985, and a 12–20% overall reduction of the Ukrainian population from the 1920s to 1990s, was estimated. The number of greater spotted eagles in Estonia declined 14% merely from 2004 to 2010, with declines having been detected for some time there. Belarus has as many as 150–200 breeding pairs (with confirmed counts of somewhat over 100) and is considered the most important breeding area known outside of Russia.<p>Whereas the total numbers in European Russia were once estimated at around 1,000 breeding pairs in the 1960s, there are estimated to be fewer than 700 pairs remaining there. The species' range has shrunk in the Russian Far East, where it was once widely found but is now restricted to below the middle Amur river, along the Ussuri river, and south Primorsky Krai, although anecdotal information suggests that it is still somewhat common in the whole Western Siberian lowlands from the Ural Mountains to the middle Ob River. In Kazakhstan, there are an estimated 74–97 breeding pairs of the species. <p>Wintering estimates are more scattered and efforts to tabulate numbers in India show they continue to occur quite broadly, but in perhaps slightly lowered and more scattered numbers. In Armenia, it is considered one of the two rarest of the nation’s 30 raptor species, along with the eastern imperial eagle. Wintering numbers of greater spotted eagles in the Mediterranean Basin were found to total about 300–400 individuals, with a bit under 34% of these in Israel, just under 32% in Greece, 16% in Turkey, somewhat smaller numbers in Romania and Spain, and tiny numbers in Southeastern Europe, Montenegro, and France. Around 50 individuals winter in Turkey per other sources. The species appears fairly rarely in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where they are seen singly and sparsely in most cases.<p>The species' primary threats are habitat degradation and habitat loss. Greater spotted eagles appear to be highly sensitive to habitat alterations, especially drainage of wetlands, intensified agricultural practices, and abandonment of floodplain management practices. <p>Detrimental wetland management processes have additionally affected the species on their wintering grounds, where in Saudi Arabia at least, the effect has been offset by the species adapting to man-made bodies of water (unlike in winter, though, there is no evidence that they adapt well to man-made areas during breeding). The amount of usable manmade habitat has shrunk in Thailand with a change to dry season rice field cropping and the creeping presence of urbanization, along with probable rodenticide usage and other poisonings, likely harming the number of the species able to winter there. <p>Other known threats include human disturbance during the mating season, with forestry operations now known to be a major cause of disturbance at the nest site. Furthermore, greater spotted eagles are threatened by mostly inadvertent poisonings and collisions with man-made objects, especially electrical wires. Poisonings were known to be a serious cause of mortality in a Shanxi reserve in China, where the eagles were seen to hunt down sickly or dying common pheasants that had been poisoned and then subsequently dying themselves, this becoming the primary local source of mortality. <p>In the Malay Peninsula, subsequent to a brief increase of the species from the 1960s to the 1980s due to environmental changes favorable to avian scavengers, a crash in numbers down to almost none was thought to be quite likely due to pesticide and other poison usage. The real trends of greater spotted eagles are sometimes masked by misidentifications. <p>Furthermore, as aforementioned, the species is at threat of hybridization and ultimate supplantation by the lesser spotted eagle as its range creeps farther east. The greater spotted eagle is legally protected in only scattered nations, making conservation efforts difficult. Among the nations where they are legally protected are Belarus, Estonia, France, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, and nominally in Thailand. A working group specifically to address spotted eagles has been established as of the 21st century. The working groups have managed to undertake conservation efforts in Belarus, Estonia, and Ukraine—the core breeding areas left in Europe for the species—and have successfully instituted restrictions on forestry activities near nesting sites during the breeding season. <p>The building of artificial nest platforms did not seem to greatly aid greater spotted eagles in Nizhny Novgorod—unlike other raptors such as the osprey, the white-tailed eagle, and the golden eagle—as only one pair of greater spotted eagles were recorded to use a platform as a nest. In an exceptional positive note, it was found the European population of greater spotted eagle, as studied via microsatellites, retains quite high genetic diversity, meaning that there is no eminent threat of a genetic bottleneck for the species.

Tendance de la population

declining