Sea eagle

This article is about a group of birds. For other uses, see Sea eagle (disambiguation).

Sea eagles
Temporal range: Middle Miocene–Recent 16–0 Ma[1]
Bald eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Accipitriformes
Family: Accipitridae
Subfamily: Haliaeetinae
Savigny, 1809
Genus

A sea eagle or fish eagle (also called erne or ern, mostly in reference to the white-tailed eagle) is any of the birds of prey in the subfamily Haliaeetinae[2] of the bird of prey family Accipitridae. Ten extant species exist, currently described with this label.

The subfamily has a significant reach, with a scholarly article in 2005 reporting that they were "found in riverine and coastal habitat[s] throughout the world". However, Haliaeetinae inhabited areas have experienced particular threats given the context of human impacts on the environment.[3]

  1. ^ "Mindat.org". www.mindat.org. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
  2. ^ Etymology: Neo-Latin "sea eagle", from Ancient Greek [1] Archived 2021-12-08 at the Wayback Machine ἁλιάετος (haliaetos) or ἁλιαίετος (haliaietos, poetic (e.g. Homeric) variant), "sea eagle, osprey" (hali, "at sea" (dative case), + aetos, "eagle"). The two variant Greek forms lie behind the equally correct latinizations haliaetus (as in Pandion haliaetus) and haliaeetus.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Molecular was invoked but never defined (see the help page).