A winter visitor to the Indian shoreline. The summer adult has a chocolate-brown head pale grey body, black tips to the primary wing feathers, and red bill and legs. The hood is lost in winter, leaving just 2 dark spots, one is seen here just behind the eye. Immature birds have a mottled pattern of brown spots over most of the body.
The white-bellied sea eagle is also known as the white-breasted sea eagle. Resident from India and Sri Lanka through Southeast Asia to Australia on coasts and major waterways, the white-bellied sea eagle breeds and hunts near water, and fish form around half of its diet. The bird here is seen with a wader kill, although it was anti light still the record of seeing this beautiful raptor with a kill made it up.
As we approached the gulls sitting in the back water / sea slowly the birds started to react and fly. The specific individual (Black Gull) did not seem perturbed and managed to stay put with one leg up – indicating a position to conserve energy.
Although the trip to Kundapura was to see and capture images of the sea eagle, getting an Osprey as well was a bonus. Osprey is also also called as sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk and is a predominated fish eating bird. Osprey is not classified as a sea eagle and the osprey is unusual in that it is a single living species that occurs nearly worldwide.
