Mountain Hawk-Eagle

The mountain hawk-eagle, or Hodgson's hawk-eagle, is a large bird of prey native to Asia. Like other Asian hawk-eagles it was earlier placed in the genus Spizaetus, but genetic studies placed the Old World members in Nisaetus. The crest is largely black with a small buffy tip. It is named nipalensis for Nepal, and Hodgson for the naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson, who described it after collecting one himself in the Himalaya (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is a confirmed breeding species in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, from India and Nepal through Bangladesh to Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan. In the Himalaya it mostly lives at 600–2,800 m, and it has seldom been recorded down to 200 m, mostly in winter. A forest dweller and opportunistic predator, it readily varies its prey between birds, mammals, reptiles and other vertebrates, and it is silent apart from the breeding season, when its call is a shrill treble note like a penny whistle. SoIB 2023 rates it a Low conservation priority, a resident forest bird with a Moderate range and an inconclusive long-term trend of about −28% (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).