Birds of Prey: Steller's Sea Eagle

Photograph by Tuxyso / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

When you first see a picture of the Steller's Sea Eagle you might believe it to be a cartoon character, but don't let its apparently silly looks fool you.  This is a highly successful and powerful bird of prey.  The Steller's Sea Eagle is on average about twice the size of the mighty bald eagle!

This eagle is named for Georg Wilhelm Steller, the German botanist, zoologist, physician and explorer.  He observed the eagle in 1740 during  Vitus Bering’s harrowing Second Kamchatka Expedition to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the northern Pacific off Siberia, then on towards Alaska in the disastrous and tragic finale of this voyage.

Steller's journal from this expedition makes for fascinating reading and is available for free  perusing and download at the Internet Archive:

Bering's Voyages Volume 2 
 

National Geographic presents: 
 Kamchatka: Siberia's Forbidden Wilderness

Kamchatka: Siberia's Forbidden Wilderness

  

The San Diego Zoo notes that this eagle is often called the world’s most magnificent bird of prey, and has an informative web page on it:

Steller's Sea Eagle Page 

The Internet Bird Collection has what must be the most extensive information page on the Steller's Sea Eagle, with many videos and sound bites:

Watch this amazing hunter in action in this National Geographic footage: 

The Steller's Eagle is considered to be the biggest and heaviest eagle on the planet with a wing span of over eight feet!

This video is great for showing the eagle's size compared to a human handler:

Eagles in the Snow:  the BBC's intrepid explorer heads to the ice ridden ocean off Siberia. On his exciting kayak journey, he encounters different species of sea eagle and even a red fox! From the BBC's Japan's Secret Wilderness:

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species gives the Steller's Sea Eagle's current conservation status as "Vulnerable":

The Institute of Wildlife studies has been involved in conservation issues with Steller’s Sea Eagles in Russia and provides a page about the the eagle and its conservation:

 

Steller's Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus)

Birds of Prey: Great Nicobar Serpent Eagle (Spilornis klossi)

Adult perched.   Photo by:  Niranjan Sant, IBC1512624. Accessible at hbw.com/ibc/1512624.

The Great Nicobar Serpent Eagle (Spilornis klossi) is considered to be the smallest eagle currently living.  How small is it? In the Main Hall at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh you can go to the Eagle Wall and compare your wingspan to those of many eagles, including the Great Nicobar Serpent Eagle (in this case called South instead of Great):

And fittingly this eagle can only be found in a very small place, the Indian island of Great Nicobar just north of Sumatra:

 Planet of Birds: Great Nicobar Serpent Eagle (Spilornis klossi)

Wild Films India has an excellent panoramic fly over of Great Nicobar Island:

OGAClicks provides a good overview of this eagle:

Great Nicobar Serpent Eagle

 Avibase - The World Bird Database classifies the Great Nicobar Eagle as "Near Threatened":

 The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species keeps track of what threats this eagle faces, and what is currently being done to protect it:

The Wildlife Photographer Shreeram M V describes his expedition to photograph this amazing bird:

Visual Quotient: The World's Smallest Eagle

Birds of Prey: Haast's Eagle

Haast's Eagle Monsters of the Past Card 98 front

Haast's Eagle Monsters of the Past Card 98 back

The extinct Haast's Eagle is currently considered to be the largest eagle to have ever lived and so has led a sensational afterlife as in the Monsters of the Past trading cards above. 

Haast's Eagle is named for Julius von Haast, the German geologist and explorer who was the first  curator of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand.  He studied the bones of this giant bird and named it Harpagornis Moorei in honor of his friend and benefactor P. H. Moore of Glenmark, New Zealand where the bones were found.

His interesting article on the Harpagornis Moorei from 1871 can be found in the Internet Archives: 

Transactions and proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, Volume 4 - page 192

The Cenozoic Life Blogspot has an excellent page on Haast's Eagle including the size comparison below:

It could be found only on the South Island of New Zealand and is believed to have become extinct around 1400 AD due to the arrival of humans on the island and their hunting to extinction of Haast's Eagle's primary prey, the Moa, a large flightless bird:

Giant Moa Monsters of the Past Card 85 front

Giant Moa Monsters of the Past Card 85 back

The Cenozoic Life Blogspot also has an excellent page about the South Island Giant Moa including the following size comparison of man, moa and Haast's eagle:

New Zealand Geographic provides this image of the Haast's eagle attacking a giant moa:

Illustration by Colin Edgerley

Many scientists believe that the size of this eagle was due to an evolutionary process called Island Giganticism which is also considered responsible for the huge Komodo Dragon lizard.

 The Prehistoric Wildlife site has a good size comparison between Haast's Eagle, the modern day Swamp Harrier and Eyles' Harrier, another extinct New Zealand raptor that is also considered to be the result of island giganticism:

      

 Discovery Science:  The Haast's Eagle

Haast's Eagle was included in New Zealand's Bird of the Week Series:

New Zealand Birds Online has an excellent page about the Haast's Eagle:

Haast's eagle. Haast’s eagle (Harpagornis moorei). Image 2006-0010-1/37 from the series 'Extinct birds of New Zealand'. Masterton. Image © Purchased 2006. © Te Papa by Paul Martinson See Te Papa website

Model maker Jake Yocum and curator vertebrates Alan Tennyson explain the science and process that went into recreating a full-size model of the huge extinct Haast’s eagle, pouākai.  It will feature at the Museum of New Zealand in the new exhibition, Te Taiao | Nature. . 

 New Exhibition Information

 

Special thanks to Mark Berge for suggesting I add the Haast's Eagle to my Birds of Prey series.  I was only going to do living birds, but the Haast's Eagle was just too fascinating to resist!

Birds of Prey: Owls

Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) at Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Delta, BC, Canada.
Photographed by Brendan Lally [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Owls, with their large, forward facing eyes seem striking, uncanny and almost human and this may help explain their powerful roles in such a wide variety of mythologies. 


The Owl Pages provides an overview of owls in myth and legend:

Owls in Mythology & Culture

An Athenian Tetradrachm from after 499 BCE. CC BY-SA 3.0 Source

World Owl Mythology 

Art by Madeline von Foerster

Raptors that hunt by night or nocturnal birds of prey are exclusively made up of two sorts of owls:

• Strigidae: "typical owls"
• Tytonidae: barn, grass and bay owls     

The Owl Pages, a wonderful resource for all things owl, has a good summary page of the various owls included in these two families:

Owl Pages: Owls of the World

Peterson Field Guides provides a good summary of many aspects of the owl:

Cornell Bird Academy provides online courses and extensive information on owls:

Snowy Owl Invasion:  A Migration Saga

Owls have an amazing repertoire 

of distinctive calls:
 

Owls of North America and their calls provided by Close Encounters of the Bird Kind:

The BBC shows us how owls are also legendary for their silent flight:

Experiment! How Does An Owl Fly So Silently? | Super Powered Owls | BBC

Observe the graceful and unique flight of a barn owl in incredible slow motion:

Barn Owl vs Peregrine Falcon vs Greylag Goose | Super Powered Owls | BBC

Their amazing flying skills are used to defend their young against other predators such as Arctic 
Skuas and Wolves:

Master of the Sky: Owl Vs Wolf 

| Super Powered Owls | BBC

Watch the full Nature documentary on the extraordinary super powers of owls:

Robert E. Fuller the British wildlife artist likes to immerse himself in the daily lives of animals and birds to lend authenticity to his final paintings and sculpture.  Here he provides a fascinating video of barn owl nesting and family life:

Bringing Up Baby: How barn owls do it

The Owl Research Institute in partnership with Explore website provides a fascinating set of owl live cams:

The Great Horned Owl 

Long-Eared Owl

Great Gray Owl 

Among many great books on owls, I would single out for special mention Canadian wildlife photographer and naturalist Wayne Lynch's Owls of the United States and Canada for his stunning photographs of North American owls in the wild, which he has often gone to extraordinary lengths to take... 

Birds of Prey: An Introduction to the Raptors

From the IBC Bird Collection.  Species: Andean Condor   Vultur gryphus
                                                      Author: Andy Wombat

                                                      Date: Monday, July 2, 2012

                                                      Added to IBC: 7 Feb 2013 - 14:41

There is still considerable controversy surrounding the various families that are considered to be raptors or birds of prey and how they are related.  In their Birds of Prey entry, Wikipedia has a good summary diagram that includes the families now considered to be raptors among the Telluraves, though the relations among them are still not firmly set:

From this classification, the raptors are divided into two groups:  

1.  Those that hunt by day or diurnal birds of prey: 

• Accipitridae: hawks, eagles, buzzards, harriers, kites, and Old World vultures
• Pandionidae: the osprey
• Sagittariidae: the secretarybird
• Falconidae: falcons, caracaras, and forest falcons
• Cathartidae: New World vultures

2.  Those that hunt by night or nocturnal birds of prey which are exclusively made up of two sorts of owls:

• Strigidae: "typical owls"
• Tytonidae: barn and bay owls

The Spruce provides a good summary of the raptors and their primary characteristics:

Raptor Profile and Types

 The Spruce also provides some other interesting pages on raptors and their behaviour:

Mantling - How Raptors Eat

What do Birds of Prey Eat?

Kettle of Hawks - Flocks of Birds of Prey

 Science Trek education site has a good introductory page on the various types of raptors and considers their primary characteristics to be:

• hooked beaks with sharp edges
• feet with sharp, curved claws or talons
• keen eyesight

By this definition, raptors belong to three scientific orders:  the Accipitriformes,
the Strigiformes and Falconiformes. The orders are divided into six groups with a total of about 446 species worldwide. They include:

• secretary bird (1 species in Africa)
• falcons (63 species)
• osprey (1 species)
• hawks and eagles (226 species)
• vultures (7 species)
• owls (148 species)

Read more on these raptors at their site:

Science Trek on Types of Raptors

National Geographic provides an excellent documentary:

Wild Birds of Prey ( Raptors, Hawks, Falcons )

There are other documentaries that also provide a good introduction to birds of prey:

Eagle, Falcon, Owl - Birds Of Prey:

 Nature 2018 HD Documentary

 

Secret Nature - Facts About Birds of Prey 

| Bird Documentary | Natural History Channel

 

As usual the great Cornell Ornithology Lab site All About Birds has some excellent raptor info:

Tips for Raptor Watching Season

 

Sharpen Up Your Sharpie ID With New Crossley Raptor Guide

  

Raptors of Winter

 

New Crossley ID Quiz Challenges You to ID Raptors from Above 

 

A Hawk Watching Quiz on the Prairie

 Crossley Style

    

Q&A with Brian Sullivan

 Coauthor of Crossley ID Guide: Raptors

 

Do raptors make good neighbors?  Apparently...at least for hummingbirds: 

Raptors Make Good Neighbors

Hawks nearby? Good! This Black-chinned Hummingbird rests easy knowing that hawks will drive away (or eat) potential nest predators such as a raccoon or jay.    
Photo © Ashley Cohrt

 

 

 

NOW VISIT VARIOUS BIRDS OF PREY:

Birds of Prey: The Osprey
Birds of Prey: Owls
Birds of Prey: Haast's Eagle
Birds of Prey: Great Nicobar Serpent Eagle
Birds of Prey: Steller's Sea Eagle
Birds of Prey: Eagle on Stilts
Birds of Prey: Gyrfalcon
Birds of Prey: White-Tailed Eagle

Birds of Prey: the Osprey

Photographed by Jay McGowan:  https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/43425571

The Osprey fish hawk is found all over the world and is making a good comeback everywhere due to the intervention of environmentalists and reduced pesticide use and hunting.

Long been fascinated by ospreys. As a kid I found a dead one on the boulevard on the way to school. Wanted to give it to the local taxidermist, but he said it was such a large, beautiful specimen that he wanted to give it to the Royal Ontario Museum and their skilled taxidermists. And so we did that and it has been on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. 

Now there is a new beautifully illustrated book by one of the world's greatest living experts on ospreys: Alan F. Poole

Ospreys: Revival of a Global Predator 

The Explore.org website offers links to some great Osprey Nest Live Cams, including this majestic view in Montana:

Live Cam of Osprey Nest in Charlo, Montana

 

The Cornell Ornithology Lab is unrivalled in its amazing pictures and information:

All About Birds: the Osprey 

In the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario, Canada there is an organization that befriends ospreys and provides much fascinating information on this majestic bird of prey:

Friends of the Osprey 

 

The Birds of Prey YouTube Channel presents a short video of an osprey in flight as well as a fledgling just learning to fly:

BBC Scotland presents Ewan McGregor narrating over amazing slow motion footage of an osprey fishing: