Pallas's Fish Eagle

Pallas's fish eagle, also called Pallas's sea eagle or the band-tailed fish eagle, is a large brownish sea eagle, 72–85 cm long with a wingspan of 180–215 cm. It has a light sandy-brown hood and a whitish face, darker brown wings, a rufous back, and a black tail with a wide, distinctive white stripe. The long, slender wings, particularly slender for a sea eagle, are rather dark brown beneath, and young birds show a white band on the underwing. Females, at 2.1–3.7 kg, are slightly larger than males (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in the east Palearctic, from Kazakhstan and Russia to China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan, and is partially migratory, with Central Asian birds wintering among southern Asian birds in northern India. Its diet is mainly large freshwater fish, but it seems broadly opportunistic like better-known sea eagles, regularly taking water birds and also mammals, frogs, reptiles, insects such as wasp larvae, and carrion. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority: a winter migrant of wetland with a rapid long-term decline of about 71% and a Restricted range of about 27,700 km² (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).