Little eagle
| Little eagle | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Falconiformes (or Accipitriformes, q.v.) |
| Family: | Accipitridae |
| Genus: | Hieraaetus |
| Species: | H. morphnoides |
| Binomial name | |
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Hieraaetus morphnoides (Gould, 1841) |
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| Little eagle range in red (pygmy eagle range in green) | |
| Synonyms | |
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The little eagle (Hieraaetus morphnoides) is a very small eagle native to Australia, measuring 45–55 cm (17–21.5 inches) in length and weighing 815 g (1.8 lb) – roughly the size of a peregrine falcon. It tends to inhabit open woodland, grassland and arid regions, shunning dense forest. It is a near relative of both the Palearctic booted eagle and the massive but now extinct Haast's eagle of New Zealand.
John Gould described the little eagle in 1841. The distinctive pygmy eagle has long been considered a subspecies, but a 2009 genetic study shows it to be distinctive genetically and warrants species status.
Barrett, et al. (2003), describes the little eagle as a medium-sized bird of prey, between 45 and 55 cm in length. The little eagle is small and stocky with a broad head. It has fully feathered legs and a square-cut, barred tail. Wingspan is about 120 cm with males having longer wings in proportion to their bodies, but being nearly half the weight of females. It is a powerful bird and during flight has strong wing beats, glides on flat wings and soars on slightly raised or flat wings (Marchant and Higgins 1993; Ferguson-Lees and Christie 2001; Olsen and Fuentes 2004; Debus 1998).
The little eagle occurs in light and dark colour forms and generally these colours change with age. The most common is the light form which is dark brown occurring on the back and wings with black streaks on the head and neck, and a sandy to pale under body. The dark form of this eagle is similar except the head and under body is usually darker brown or rich rufous. The sexes are similar with females being larger and typically darker. Juveniles are similar to adults but tend to be more strongly rufous in colour with less contrast in patterns (Marchant and Higgins 1993; Ferguson-Lees and Christie 2001; Olsen and Fuentes 2004; Debus 1998).
Although the little eagle has a large range and can be found in most parts of Australia, except heavily forested parts of the Great Dividing Range (Marchant and Higgins, 1993). Like so many Australian natives, it faces a deteriorating population due to a loss of habitat and competition from other species. One of the biggest factors to the decline of the little eagle is the decline of rabbits due to the release of the calicivirus, interestingly the eagle relied heavily on the rabbit population due to the extinction and massive decline of native terrestrial mammals of rabbit size or smaller such as large rodents, bandicoots, bettongs, juvenile banded hare-wallaby and other wallabies (Sharp et al. 2002).
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Wikipedia