Legge's Hawk-Eagle

Legge's hawk-eagle is a medium-sized eagle; males average about 70cm long and females about 76cm. The typical adult is brown above and pale below, with barring under the flight feathers and tail and heavy streaking on the breast and belly. The wings are broad with a curved trailing edge and are held in a shallow V in flight. The sexes are similar, but young birds are often whiter-headed. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the mountain hawk-eagle but is smaller with unstreaked buff underwing coverts, and a 2008 study proposed it as a full species (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in mountain woodland from southern India to Sri Lanka, building a stick nest in a tree and usually laying a single egg, and feeds on small mammals, birds and reptiles. Its English name honours William Vincent Legge and its scientific name the zoologist E.F. Kelaart. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka and a resident forest bird with a restricted range, has too little data for a trend and rates it a Moderate conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).