Little Eagle

The little eagle has fully feathered legs and a square-cut, barred tail. Wingspan is about 125 cm with males having longer wings in proportion to their bodies, but being nearly half the weight of females. It is a powerful bird and during flight has strong wing beats, glides on flat wings and soars on slightly raised or flat wings.

The little eagle occurs in light and dark colour forms and generally these colours change with age. The most common is the light form which is dark brown occurring on the back and wings with black streaks on the head and neck, and a sandy to pale under body. The dark form of this eagle is similar except the head and under body is usually darker brown or rich rufous.

Distribution and habitat

Although the little eagle has a large range and can be found in most parts of Australia, except heavily forested parts of the Great Dividing Range. Like so many Australian natives, it faces a deteriorating population due to a loss of habitat and competition from other species. One of the biggest factors to the decline of the little eagle is the decline of rabbits due to the release of the calicivirus, the eagle relied heavily on the rabbit population due to the extinction and massive decline of native terrestrial mammals of rabbit size or smaller such as large rodents, bandicoots, bettongs, juvenile banded hare-wallaby and other wallabies.

Typical habitat for the little eagle includes woodland or open forest. Higher abundance of the species is associated with hillsides where there is a mixture of wooded and open areas such as riparian woodlands, forest margins and wooded farmland. Little eagles usually avoid large areas of dense forest, preferring to hunt in open woodland, where the birds use trees for lookouts. In the ACT, little eagles inhabit frequent open woodland and riparian areas.

Reproduction

Little eagles nest in open woodland (usually on hillsides) and along tree-lined watercourses, with the nest typically placed in a mature, living tree. The birds build a stick nest lined with leaves and may use different nests in successive years, including those of other birds such as crows. A pair of little eagles will only reproduce once a year and each pair will only produce one or two eggs per season, usually laid in late August to early September. After an incubation period of about 37 days, one or two young are fledged after approximately eight weeks. Maturity in terms of breeding takes two to three years, leaving a large population of juvenile eagles, mature eagles constitute roughly less than three-quarters of the population.

Hunting

Little Eagles eat mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, fish, and carrion. Young rabbits are preferred prey in the south part of their range and birds in the north, and lizards are often caught in arid habitat. Fish are sometimes stolen from Haliastur sphenerus (Whistling Kite).

Conservation status

The little eagle is listed on the IUCN Red List as of least concern. Reasons for it being classified as 'least concern' are that the bird of prey has a huge range, spanning up to 20,000km2 and the population size is only decreasing at a rate of 10% per ten years or 3 generations, instead of the required 30%.