SANFORD'S SEA-EAGLE

The 'Sanford's Sea-eagle' (''Haliaeetus sanfordi'') sometimes listed as 'Sanford's Fish-eagle', or 'Solomon Eagle' is a sea-eagle endemic to the Solomon Islands. The "sea-eagle" terminology is to be preferred, to distinguish the species of ''Haliaeetus'' from the closely related ''Ichthyophaga'' true fish eagles.del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., & Sargatal, J., eds. (1994). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' Vol. 2. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona ISBN 84-87334-15-6.

Contents

Description

References

Footnotes

Description

The Sanford's Sea-eagle was discovered by and named after Dr. Leonard Sanford, a trustee for the American Museum of Natural History. The first description was by Professor Ernst Mayr in 1935. It can reach a length between 70–90 cm and a weight between 2.3–2.7 kg. The wingspan is between 165 and 185 cm. It is the only large predator on the Solomon Islands. The eagles inhabits coastal forests and lakes up to an altitude of about 1500 m asl.
The plumage is whitish brown to bright brown on the head and the neck. The underparts are tinged from brown to reddish brown and dark brown. The upperparts are coloured from darkish brown to gray black. The eyes are bright brown. Uniquely among sea-eagles, this species has an entirely dark tail throughout its life.
The breeding season is from August to October. The nest consists of two eggs.
The diet consists of mainly of tideline carrion, fish, molluscs, crabs, tortoises, and sea snakes, and more rarely birds and fruit-bats snatched from the rainforest canopy.
It forms a superspecies with the White-bellied Sea-eagle. Like in other sea eagle species pairs, the other taxon is white-headed. These two are genetically very close it seems; their lineages separated not longer ago than 1 mya, probably only in the Middle Pleistocene, a few 100.000 years ago (Wink ''et al.'', 1996^[1]).
Both share the dark bill, talons, and eyes with the other Gondwanan sea-eagles.
This eagle is often illustrated on postage stamps of the Solomon Islands.

References

★ Database entry includes justification for why this species is vulnerable

★ Birdlife factsheet

★ 'Wink', M.; Heidrich, P. & Fentzloff, C. (1996): A mtDNA phylogeny of sea eagles (genus ''Haliaeetus'') based on nucleotide sequences of the cytochrome ''b'' gene. ''Biochemical Systematics and Ecology'' '24': 783-791. PDF fulltext

Footnotes

1.
Note that the author's reservation about the fast rate of molecular evolution have proven well justified; the 2% per 4 million years seem if anything an overestimate. In addition, as the provenance of specimens is not noted, genetic introgression due to hybridzation cannot be excluded, as the species' ranges touch. This is unlikely due to marked differences in behavior and habitat preferences however.