Tawny Eagle

The tawny eagle is a large, long-lived bird of prey. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. Its heavily feathered legs illustrate it to be a member of the subfamily Aquilinae, also known as “booted eagles”. Tawny eagles have an extensive but discontinuous breeding range that constitutes much of the African continent as well as the Indian subcontinent, with rare residency occurring in the southern Middle East. Throughout its range, it favours open dry habitats such as semideserts, deserts steppes, or savanna plains. Despite its preference for areas of aridity, the species seldom occurs in areas where trees are entirely absent. It is a resident breeder which lays one to three eggs in a stick nest mostly commonly in the crown of a tree. The tawny eagle is perhaps the most high opportunistic of all of its taxonomic clan, and often scavenges on carrion or engages in kleptoparasitism towards other carnivorous animals but is also a bold and active predator, often of relatively large and diverse prey. It is estimated that tawny eagles can reach the age of 16 years old. Nonetheless, precipitous declines have been detected throughout the tawny eagle’s range. Numerous factors, particularly loss of nesting habitat due to logging and global warming, as well as persecution and other anthropogenic mortality are driving the once numerous tawny eagle perhaps to the brink of extinction.