Circaetus gallicus information navigator

Kunal Kambli in his recent post for The Weather Channel writes that Short-toed Eagle is among the species whose populations in India have declined in last years according to:

• SoIB 2020. State of India’s Birds, 2020: Range, trends and conservation status. The SoIB Partnership. Pp 50. – (En).

Unlike others, the population of Short-toeds in India is settled. Although, there are no more or less exact evaluations of its current size, it is undoubtedly significant, and the species is under highest legal protection in the country. However, the short- and long-term negative trends are ascertained on the background of the global population trend estimated as stable. This is a kind of unpleasant surprise and causes of the local population decline deserve to be figured out and analysed in details.

On the eve of the New Year, let’s have a look at the following remarkable pictures taken by different photographers in India in 2019 which present dramatic and curious moments of Short-toed Eagles’ life:

Also, the authors of the shots tell stories behind them.

Askar Isabekov has merged data from different birdwatching websites on the Birds of Northern Eurasia portal. This database allows to monitor appearing new pictures and observations of various bird species in several countries of Northern Eurasia, including Short-toed Eagles. At least 3 out of currently 12 regional sites were mentioned on HoverOverUs before.

Diet and breeding site characteristics of six different raptor species, including STE, in Central India are compared in the following article:

• Satish PANDE, Reuven YOSEF, Federico MORELLI, Rajkumar PAWAR and Ram MONE, 2018 – Diet and habitat affinities in six raptor species in India // Avian Research, 9:36. doi:10.1186/s40657-018-0129-2 – (En).

That is a region where Short-toed Snake Eagles have potential food competitors. Besides, data on their diet and habitats in the Indian part of the distribution area are of great interest in themselves.

An article about breeding of Short-toed Eagles in Surendranagar District /map/ has been published in the Indian BIRDS – Journal of South Asian Ornithology this year. Such releases are always of great interest because observation data on Indian Short-toed Eagles are rarely available on the Web:

• Devvratsinh MORI, Raju VYAS & Kartik UPADHYAY, 2017 – Breeding biology of the Short-toed Snake Eagle Circaetus gallicus // Indian BIRDS. Vol. 12, No. 6: pp. 149-156. – (En).

The presented fact file is quite outstanding because it is mainly based on information collected in India, a region with the great sedentary Short-toed Eagle population. Despite the fact that the species biology in the region is definitely of great interest, too few data on it is currently available. Consequently, this information sheet contains details which could be fairly surprising for European researchers. Secondly, this is simply a good example of an informative poster. The file can be found on the Ela Foundation website.

Information about certain species of Indian birds of prey is rare on the web. Short-toed Eagle is not an exception. The following websites a little open a window to the world of Indian snake eagles.

This collection of photos was already mentioned on our site. During the last 7 years a huge amount of magnificent pictures taken by Indian nature photographers has been added to the galleries. They show Short-toed Eagles in the local natural environment.

The second site, India Biodiversity Portal, is an interactive online database of observations for Indian birds and animals, and generally a repository of information on India’s biodiversity. Normal for such portals maps with points of occurrences and observations, as well as photos and videos are available there. This video deserves special attention: two Short-toed Eagles found themselves on the ground when, all appearances, they were fighting. The scene was captured near the Pocharam Wildlife Sanctuary /map/.