Pallas’s Fishing Eagle and Crested Hawk Eagle sits on a naked tree branch watching out for its prey…
Pallas’s Fish Eagle (Haliaeetus leucoryphus), also known as Pallas’s Sea Eagle or Band-Tailed Fish Eagle, is a large, brownish sea-eagle. It breeds in Central Asia, between the Caspian Sea and the Yellow Sea, from Kazakhstan and Mongolia to the Himalayas, Bangladesh and northern India. It is partially migratory, with central Asian birds wintering among the southern Asian birds in northern India, and also further west to the Persian Gulf. Palas’ fish eagle has pale brownish hood and black-and-white tail. Adult are easily recognised with its dark brown, warm buffish to whitish head, neck and upper mantle and blackish tail with broad, white central band. Juveniles are more uniformly dark, with all-dark tail, but in flight show strongly patterned underwing, with whitish band across coverts and prominent, whitish primary flashes. Its diet consists primarily of large freshwater fish. They also regularly predate water birds, including adult Greylag Geese, by assaulting them on the surface of the water and then flying off with the kill. Since that goose species is slightly heavier than the eagle, this is one of the greatest weight-lifting feats ever recorded for a flying bird.
The Changeable Hawk-Eagle or Crested Hawk-eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus) is a bird of prey species of the family Accipitridae. It was formerly placed in the genus Spizaetus, but studies pointed to the group being paraphyletic resulting in the Old World members being placed in Nisaetus (Hodgson, 1836) and separated from the New World species. Changeable Hawk-Eagles breed in the Indian Subcontinent, mainly in India and Sri Lanka, and from the southeast rim of the Himalaya across Southeast Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines. This is a bird occurring singly (outside mating season) in open woodland, although island forms prefer a higher tree density. It builds a stick nest in a tree and lays a single egg.
The Changeable Hawk-Eagle is a medium-large raptor at about 60–72 centimetres in length. It is a relatively slender forest eagle with some subspecies especially limnaetus being dimorphic giving the name of “Changeable”. This, and also a complicated phylogeny further complicate precise identification. Normally brown above; white below with barring on the undersides of the flight feathers and tail; black longitudinal streaks on throat and chocolate streaks on breast. Some subspecies have a crest of four feathers, but this is all but absent in others. The sexes are quite similar in their plumage, but males are about 15% smaller than females. The underparts and head of juveniles are whitish or buff with few dark streaks.
The wings are long and parallel-sided, and are held flat in flight, which helps to distinguish this species from the similar Mountain Hawk-Eagle. In overhead flight, comparatively rounded wings (upturned at tip), longish tail, white body (spotted with brown) and grey underside of wings (streaked and spotted) are leading pointers. Changeable Hawk-Eagles eat mammals, birds and reptiles. There they wait for jungle fowl, pheasants, hares and other small animals coming out into the open. The bird then swoops down forcefully, strikes, and bears the prey away in its talons.
Source: Wikipedia & http://www.birdlife.org/
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