Help with Indian Bird

[Polarbear]

Now that I have your attention, may I ask if anyone can identify this bird of prey I took whilst on my recent trip to India I would appreciate it.

Any comments would be good as it was a particulaly difficult pic to do with the bird of prey actually circling around tring to dive down and get fish from the ground that the local fisherman had discarded. They were probably about 20-30 feet above me.

Taken with my trusty A300 and Tamron 70-300mm lens.

Pic 1 is probably better to get a good look at it, pic 2, well i like the natural action I managed to get without too much blur, if that makes sense?

Thanks

[Winston]

Tawny Eagle.

[aster]

Hi Polarbear,

I like the second image for catching the bird in such a vigorous state. The energy exertion of the body and wings is almost reflected face.

I think it was a great moment to catch and in time you may even get sharper and closer ones like this.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

It's quite difficult to positively identify some birds of prey sometimes, some imm. types have very different coloured plumage to the full adult versions and then you have regional variations on top of that. Some key features you would look at are the colour of the beak, the eye, the feet, the colour pattern under the wing (not visible in this case), and the shape and length of the tail.
Looking through my (local) bird book, the closest I can find is the immature Papuan Harrier, it's the only one I can see that is dark brown all over with a square tail, but that's still not correct either as the Papuan Harrier has a light grey colour on the beak where the yellow is on your bird. Also the Papuan Harrier has a yellow eye.
There are a couple of dark Falcons, the Black Falcon and the Brown Falcon, both of which have almost black eyes, but they have like all the falcons, spitfire shaped high speed wings....no 'fingers' on the end.
So I'll concede defeat, and go with Winston on this one.
Greg

[Polarbear]

Thank you for everyone's contributions, much appreciated. I think I will do some looking up on the "Tawny Eagle" today and see if they match up.

I do love trying to capture birds on digital, I find that this is sometimes restricted by lens, and time to sit and wait. This was one of those "golden opportunity" moments when it was literally in front of me and they were flying around for as long as I needed because of the free food on offer for them.Equally I had to stand in the middle of a road to get close enough to get these, which in India is quite risky! And it was incredibly hot, so standing around too long was a hot business.

[Polarbear]

Hello Winston,

Thank you are right, Tawny Eagle it is, confirmed!

A "virtual" bottle of wine is winging it's way to you now
PB

[Winston]

We got lucky on this one. The Tawny has a huge range. I have a lot pictures of them, many in flight, all taken in East and Southern Africa.

[Greg Beetham]

We don't seem to have that exact variant here, I did find another one in the book (different newer book), that could be the local variant, called the Little Eagle 'dark morph' that's similar to the photo in most respects, square tail, it even has the dark eye, there is still the difference in the beak colour though, light grey where the yellow is. But I'm thinking that it is probably the same bird as the Tawny, with just a minor local difference.
Greg