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Could this be Booted Eagle? (1 Viewer)

S

Suppalak Klabde

Member
Hi all,

I shot this at Raptor Watch Festival 2003, Chumporn, South of Thailand. This raptor was gliding very high up in the sky (only seen as a speck to bare eyes).

I thought that it was an Oriental Honey Buzzard (and so was everyone around) but I snapped this shot anyway. A closer look at the picture then made the ID toward a Booted Eagle which is rare passage migrant in Thailand.

Since you guys are more familiar with Booted Eagle I think this is the place to ask. Any comments are really appreciated.

Thank you very much,
Suppalak

P.S. sorry for the quality of the picture. It was very high up...
 

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Hello, Suppalak

I notice this is your first post, so can I say WELCOME to BirdForum. I hope we can look forward to lots more photos from Thailand from you?!

I'm not a Booted Eagle expert, but I'm sure you'll get plenty of replies from those who know before long.

Meanwhile, I hope you get as much interest and amusement from this site as I do.
 
Hi Suppalak,
Welcome indeed ! Looks like a pale morph Booted to me. I am sure others with better knowledge will opine .
Cheers!
Sumit
 
Just to be awkward......

Plumage looks good for Pale morph Booted Eagle, but I'm a little worried about the structure, something doesn't seem quite right. Now I've said that its hard to justify.

Lets try. To me Booted Eagle always looks to have the arm body to carpal) equal or slightly longer than the hand (carpal to tip). Its one of the reasons dark phases can look a bit like Black Kites. On this bird the hand looks distinctly longer than the arm.

Perhaps the head looks a little long and thin too.

I have zero knowledge about OHB. Are they as variable plumage-wise as European HB?

I suspect that if you showed me this picture as a pure silhouette and didn't tell me where it was taken, I'd say it was a European Honey Buzzard (though there is something about the tail which looks odd).
 
Hi Suppalak,

On behalf of the Admin Team and all the Moderators, let me add a warm WELCOME to you to BirdForum.

As you can already see, we have many very knowledgeable members, who are willing to help out wherever they can.

I hope you will enjoy your time with us, and I look forward to your contributions to BF about birding in Thailand.

I am sure you will be able to give us much interesting news.

Most of all, have fun and enjoy your birding.

:t:
 
Seeing this silouhette and plumage, I would go for Booted Eagle rather than EHB, but having never seen OHB, I don´t feel really qualified.

As Jane, I wonder how variable are OHB?
 
Hi All
I think it is Oriental Honey-buzzard purely from distribution and structure. I have seen OHB in Sri-Lanka but distantly and to all intents they could have been EHB apart from where we were. The structure of this bird as Jane says is a Honey, with its wee head, longish wings and bulging secondaries. I agree about the tail it looks aweful square (should be more rounded?) when splayed, maybe an area of concern. As for coloration it does look like Booted but you know how variable these Honey-buggers can be, i always try and go on size and structure. I could wrong, normally am.
Cheers Jules
 
Thank you for the warm welcome and the helpful opinions!!!

I attached 2 pictures of Oriental Honey Buzzard taken from the same Raptor Watch Festival 2003. These are 2 main variations, dark and pale morph. Their variations could be very confusing and I think it may be the same as those of EHB.

Raptors are new to me. I got my interest in them, purely because I am involved in setting up this Raptor Watch Festival 2003. Thus I have only just enough knowledge to ID them with the obvious ones. This bird is a bit on the "may be - may be not" stuff and I have to leave it to the experts...
 

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Another thing that I never noticed before. These booted eagles show 6 fingered primaries, the mystery bird has 5 and a slight difference in relative their lengths.

So sticking my neck out... I think its more likely that OHB could have similar plumage to Booted Eagle than a Booted Eagle is to have a structure like OHB.

Thanks for posting. I learned something today. Always a good thing.
 
I was about to make the same point Jane. Booted Eagles have six clear fingers. On a picture like this you should be able to clearly see all of these. I believe that this feature is one of the parameters which help separate Booted Eagle from the Buzzards when viewed distantly or in silhouette. I had a picture of dark-phase Booted Eagle in the gallery which showed this clearly but unfortunately it was lost in the recent site upgrade. I'm no expert but I can't help siding with the OHB camp(assuming its of similar build & variance as European HB). .............. Honey Buzzard photo IDs...feeling of deja-vu here! ;)
 
Hi Suppalak,
I agree that while the bird seems,on first glance,to look good for pale morph Booted Eagle,there are enough discrepancies to make this identification unlikely.In particular,the fact that there are only five obvious "fingers" on the wingtips would suggest some sort of buzzard or honey buzzard.I recall seeing some pale Honey Buzzards on migration in Bulgaria in autumn 1999,and these could look quite similar at a distance,but could be ruled out on structural features(we also saw some genuine Booted Eagles).
I reckon that this is possibly an Oriental Honey Buzzard,but I have no idea how much variation is shown by this species.
Harry H
 
Hmmmm . . . of Jane's Booted Eagle links, #1, #3 don't show any fingers at all, and #4 shows five on the right wing and none on the left, while Suppalak's first OHB shows six . . . . just goes to show how useless counting fingers is on raptor photos, as it varies so much depending on how the wing is held.

Michael
 
Hi all,

I'm back again :)
Mystery bird seems longer (and narrower?) winged than the two pics of OHB's; seems to show fairly dense barring along the flight feathers rather than the two or three clear rows that the OHB's show. the tail is obviously different to OHB.
Can we rule out Buteo spp?, Osprey? other eastern eagles?

I'll look in later and do some Googling!

Cheers and good luck.

Andy.
 
The differences in wing formula are constant though as the difference in arm/hand ratio. It was an interesting excercise to pin down why this didn't look right for Booted Eagle.
 
 
Hi Again
Another thing that i am conscious of whilst birding is 'believe first impressions'. I have found birds both common and rare on a brief glimpse, and then i have tried to talk myself out of the id (particularly whilst sea-watching). Usually i come back to my original thoughts as being the correct identification. So as Suppalak originally stated both he and the others around thought it was OHB at the time. Also being a Raptor Watch i assume scopes were being used by the majority of the observers there. I would be interested to know why he (& the others) thought OHB, was it just because they are the commonest raptor?.
I must admit i have swayed on this one, and like satrow considered other possibilities, though having never been to Thailand i don't know what should be around. Are there Crested Honey's, Hawk-eagles, Serpent-eagles, etc.
 
Hi folks

I've been lucky enough to see a few OHBs - many more than I've seen Western HBs and yes they are very variable too. This would prob. be P.p.torquatus, usually a darkish bird. They may even be a case of mimicry with their plumages. The forms on Java are quite like the larger Javan Hawk Eagle, replete with large crest!

As for what this bird is well...
Doesn’t make OHB spring to mind for me.
See no reason to doubt initial observers assessment as Booted. The wing must have looked very dark in the field to suggest this. The are one or two other possibilities as well as Andy aludes too.
 
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