White-tailed Eagle - Alaska

0n 27 April Dennis Shirley found, and Jason Gilsdorf photographed, an immature White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) on the north bluffs of Shemya Island in the Outer Aleutians.  The bird was observed for two hours before it flew out over the Bering Sea.

 

Photograph is courtesy of Jason Gilsdorf.

 

Anyone who visited Attu Island anytime from the late 1970s to 1996 will recall the fantastic walk out to the valley where this species formerly bred.  White-tailed Eagle is a partially migratory Palearctic species that breeds and winters in Eurasia and it is one of the world’s four Haliaeetus fish-eagles. Its movements over much of its Asiatic range are poorly known although most of the northern and eastern populations seem to move south in winter (Raptors of the World, Ferguson-Lee and Christie).

The ABA records of White-tailed Eagle are interesting. The Alaska ABA-area reports first came from Attu Island in March 1945 and most ABA-area records come from the Outer Aleutians.  The first ABA-area record, however, is of a bird landing on a steamer at the Nantucket Lightship, MA, in November 1914.  The bird was caught and kept in captivity until it died. In western Greenland the White-tailed Eagle population is estimated at 150−170 birds (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition, Pranty et al.).

 

The identification of the White-tialed Eagle was confirmed by Paul Lehman, Brian Sullivan, and Jerry Liguori.  "Looks perfect, wing shape (including emarginated primaries), tail pattern as Brian says....and white wing linings with dark belly for a bird with this stage of wing molt is right for WT and wrong for Bald." Jerry Liguori, fide Paul Lehman