[8][42], The bald eagle is a powerful flier, and soars on thermal convection currents. It was officially taken out from the United States list of endangered species on July 12, 1995. [120][121] As with their ultimate body size, egg size tends to increase further away from the Equator. [8] However, nearly half of known bald eagles produce two fledglings (more rarely three), unlike in some other "eagle" species such as some in the genus Aquila, in which a second fledgling is typically observed in less than 20% of nests, despite two eggs typically being laid. [67] Predators who leave behind scraps of dead fish that they kill, such as brown bears (Ursus arctos), gray wolves (Canis lupus) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), may be habitually followed in order to scavenge the kills secondarily. Bald eagles are believed to mate for life.
[18] Both the male and female take turns incubating the eggs, but the female does most of the sitting. [28][29], The bald eagle was one of the many species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th-century work Systema Naturae, under the name Falco leucocephalus. [8], Bald eagle nests are often very large in order to compensate for size of the birds. Between 1916 and 1945, the Flag of the President of the United States showed an eagle facing to its left. Between 1916 and 1945, the presidential flag (but not the seal) showed an eagle facing to its left (the viewer's right), which gave rise to the urban legend that the flag is changed to have the eagle face towards the olive branch in peace, and towards the arrows in wartime. Recent taxonomic changes affecting the British and Western Palaearctic lists, Web of the Conservation Biology Team-Bonelli's Eagle, of the University of Barcelona, Decorah Eagles: 24/7 Live Webcam from The Raptor Resource Project, EagleCAM: White-bellied Sea Eagles Live Webcam at Discovery Centre in Sydney, Australia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eagle&oldid=980903406, Articles containing Old English-language text, Articles containing Russian-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2012, Articles needing additional references from July 2016, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the New International Encyclopedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Harpy eagles (proposed subfamily Harpiinae), This page was last edited on 29 September 2020, at 04:37. What part of the liturgical calendar are flowers removed from the sanctuary? [99] This feat is the record for the heaviest load carrying ever verified for a flying bird. [59], Prey fish targeted by bald eagles are often quite large.
Harpy eagles[18] or "giant forest eagles"[17] are large eagles that inhabit tropical forests. The type of prey varies by genus. It is estimated that the martial eagle, whose eye is more than twice as long as a human eye, has a visual acuity 3.0 to 3.6 times that of humans. [46], During the Sun Dance, which is danced by a lot of Native American tribes, the eagle is included in many different ways. [153] For some time, the stronghold breeding population of bald eagles in the lower 48 states was in Florida, where over a thousand pairs have held on while populations in other states were significantly reduced by DDT use.