Steppe Eagle Aquila nipalensis 草原鵰
Category I. Accidental.
IDENTIFICATION
Dec. 2008, Daniel C. K. Chan. Juvenile.
60-81 cm. Large eagle with obvious fingers on wing tip. Less compact than Greater Spotted Eagle and more rounded tail corners than Imperial Eagle. Combination of tawny-brown mantle and wing coverts, broad white trailing edge to secondaries, broad white tips to greater coverts on both upper and underwings and broad pale tips to tail, secondaries and inner primaries identify juveniles.
Dec. 2008, Daniel C. K. Chan. Juvenile.
Large bill and prominent gape extending toward rear of eye. Juveniles have plain tawny-brown mantle and wing coverts and broad whitish tips to greater coverts.
Adults are dark, with, from below, darker carpal patches and belly, paler bases to flight feathers and only indistinct dark terminal tail band; from above short whitish bases to inner primaries. Immatures may show irregular and indistinct pale tips to greater coverts and less contrasting upperparts than juveniles.
VOCALISATIONS
Rarely calls outside breeding season and none heard in HK.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Has occurred in the Deep Bay area at or near Mai Po.
OCCURRENCE
The first HK record was of a juvenile at Mai Po on 22 December 2008 that was seen again from 28 March to 28 April 2009 (Chan 2011).
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
No observations.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Breeds from southern Russia west of the Caspian Sea east through Kazakhstan to Mongolia and northwest and north China; winters in much of east and south Africa, the Middle East, northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, northern Indochina and southwest China (Meyburg et al. 2020). In China a summer visitor to north China and a migrant through much of the rest of the country, wintering in west Yunnan (Liu and Chen 2020).
The nominate subspecies occurs from east Kazakhstan to north China and is presumed to have occurred in HK, while A. n. orientalis occurs from east Europe to central Kazakhstan.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: ENDANGERED. Population size 50,000 to 75,000, decreasing rapidly outside Europe.
Chan, D. C. K (2011). Steppe Eagle Aquila nipalensis at Mai Po. The first Hong Kong record. Hong Kong Bird Report 2007-08: 228-229.
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
Meyburg, B.-U., P. F. D. Boesman, J. S. Marks, and C. J. Sharpe (2020). Steppe Eagle (Aquila nipalensis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.steeag1.01
