Short-toed Eagle

The Specialist

© Antonio Sabater/Enfoque10

The short-toed eagle is a summer visitor of European countries, migrating mainly to sub-Saharan Africa, where it remains from September to April. This raptor, of brilliant yellow eyes and white underside, prefers open or lightly wooded country that quarters hovering like kestrels, searching for its main prey: reptiles.

Not only its distribution and behaviour is deeply conditioned by the presence of lizards and snakes; the morphology of the short-toed eagle also reflects such specialization. As an example, tarsus show armored scales to resist snakes' powerful bites. Witnessing the deadly fight between short-toed eagles and snakes proves to be really shocking, as the below sequence demonstrates.