The tawny eagle (Aquila rapax) is a large bird of prey. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. Its heavily feathered legs mark it as a member of the subfamily Aquilinae, also known as booted eagles. Tawny eagles have an extensive but discontinuous breeding range that constitutes much of the African continent as well as the Indian subcontinent, with rare residency in the southern Middle East. Throughout its range, it favours open dry habitats such as semideserts, deserts steppes, or savanna plains. Despite its preference for arid areas, the species seldom occurs in areas where trees are entirely absent. It is a resident breeder which lays one to three eggs in a stick nest most commonly in the crown of a tree.
The tawny eagle is perhaps the most highly opportunistic of all Aquilinae, and often scavenges on carrion or engages in kleptoparasitism towards other carnivorous animals but is also a bold and active predator, often of relatively large and diverse prey. It is estimated that tawny eagles can reach the age of 16 years old. Nonetheless, precipitous declines have been detected throughout the tawny eagle's range. Numerous factors, particularly loss of nesting habitat due to logging and global warming, as well as persecution (largely via poisoning) and other anthropogenic mortality (largely through contact with various manmade objects) are driving the once numerous tawny eagle perhaps to the brink of extinction.
The tawny eagle is considered to appear "inelegant, scruffy-looking" but has a fairly characteristic aquiline silhouette. The species has a fairly long neck and long deep bill with a gape line level with the eye, moderately long wings with fairly pronounced "fingers" and a slightly rounded to almost square-ended and shortish tail, which can be more reminiscent of the tail of a vulture than that of other eagles. The feathering on the legs is extensive and can appear almost baggy-looking. The bill and head are strong and bold, the body well-proportioned and feet are powerful while the countenance is quite fierce-looking. While perching, the tawny eagle tends to sit rather upright, often on stumps, posts, low trees or treetops for long periods of the day or may descend to the ground to walk somewhat unsteadily with a more horizontal posture. The wingtips when perched are roughly even with the tip of the tail. Adults have variably colored eyes, ranging from yellow to pale brown to yellow brown, while those of juveniles are dark brown. Both the cere and feet are yellow at all ages.
The tawny eagle is polymorphic with considerable individual variation in plumage, resulting in occasional disparities in plumages that can engender confusion in some. In adulthood, they can vary in coloration from all dark grey-brown to an occasionally streaky (or more plain) foxy-rufous to buffish-yellow. Most adults are usually a general grey-brown or rufous-tawny color, with occasional pale spotting visible at close quarters on the nape and belly, coverts uniformly toned as the body. The nape is consistently dark and uniform despite the feathers often being tipped paler with other feathers in adults, lacking the contrasting paler feathers often seen in other Aquila. Females, in addition to being slightly larger, may tend to be slightly darker and more streaked than the males. The most blackish-brown individuals tend to occur in India. Adults often show relatively little varying colors apart from their somewhat blacker wing and tail feathers, though when freshly molted great wing coverts and secondaries may show small pale tips which may form pale lines along closed wing has tawny upper parts and blackish flight feathers and tail.
Tawny eagles have an extremely extensive natural distribution. The African population can be found in three, fairly discrete populations. One of these is found in North Africa in south-central Morocco, possibly northern Algeria, southwestern Mauritania, Senegambia, southern Mali, central and southern Niger eastward through southern Chad, northern and central Sudan to most of Ethiopia and Somalia (but for the northeast and central-east). The north African population is scarce. In Morocco, they are heavily depleted with a few populations left in some regions such as Tarfaya, Tan-Tan and Souss-Massa. They are likely extirpated from Tunisia, where they were once frequent. In West Africa, some tawny eagles occur in Gambia, Togo, Nigeria and (though possibly not breeding) in Ivory Coast and Ghana. In east Africa and central Africa, the tawny eagle is found in central and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and throughout the drier portions of Uganda and in the entire nations of Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia (quite often residing in the Luangwa valley and the Chambeshi drainage), Malawi and Mozambique. In east Africa, it is considered perhaps the most widely distributed and regularly sighted brown eagle. In southern Africa, the tawny eagle is found throughout Zimbabwe (now often rare apart from Matabeleland and Chipinga Uplands), Botswana (still regular in Okavango Delta) and some areas of Namibia, southern and western Angola (Cuando Cubango, Cunene, Huíla Namibe, to Malanje), Eswatini, Lesotho and northern and central parts of South Africa, i.e. mainly north of the Orange River but sometimes down to the Cape Province.
