About Haliaeetus leucoryphus (Pallas, 1771)
Pallas's fish eagle (Haliaeetus leucoryphus, first described by Pallas in 1771) has distinct adult plumage: a light sandy-brown hood, a whitish face, darker brown wings, a rufous back, long slender wings (unusually slender for a sea eagle) that are dark brown on the underside, and a black tail with a wide, distinctive white stripe. Juveniles are overall a darker, cooler brown, lack the adult tail band, and have several pale areas on the wings including the underwing coverts and inner primaries, which creates a white band across the underwings of young individuals. Young Pallas's fish eagles take around four years to develop full adult plumage. This species overlaps in range with two related sea eagle species. It overlaps mainly with the grey-headed fish eagle, which is quite dissimilar, slightly smaller, and has much shorter wings. It rarely overlaps with the white-tailed eagle, which is larger, bulkier, much broader-winged, and also does not resemble Pallas's fish eagle in coloration. Pallas's fish eagle is a fairly large species. It measures 72 to 85 cm (28 to 33 in) in total length, with a wingspan of 180 to 215 cm (71 to 85 in). Females, which are slightly larger than males, weigh 2.1 to 3.7 kg (4.6 to 8.2 lb), with an average weight of 3.2 kg (7.1 lb) from a sample of nine individuals. Males weigh 2.03 to 3.3 kg (4.5 to 7.3 lb), with an average weight of 2.6 kg (5.7 lb) from a sample of ten individuals. Some recorded individuals have reached weights of 4 to 5.5 kg (8.8 to 12.1 lb) and wingspans up to 240 cm (94 in). Overall, the size of Pallas's fish eagle is just slightly smaller than large northern sea eagle species such as the bald eagle, white-tailed eagle, and Steller's sea eagle, and broadly similar to slightly larger than more tropical, centrally distributed sea eagle species. Pallas's fish eagle is distributed across Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan.
