Mountain Hawk-Eagle

The mountain hawk-eagle, or Hodgson's hawk-eagle, is a large bird of prey native to Asia. Like other Asian hawk-eagles it was earlier placed in the genus Spizaetus, but genetic studies placed the Old World members in Nisaetus. The crest is largely black with a small buffy tip. It is named nipalensis for Nepal, and Hodgson for the naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson, who described it after collecting one himself in the Himalaya (Wikipedia, general species account).

In the Himalaya it mostly lives at 600–2,800 m, and it has seldom been recorded down to 200 m, mostly in winter. A forest dweller and opportunistic predator, it readily varies its prey between birds, mammals, reptiles and other vertebrates, and it is silent apart from the breeding season, when its call is a shrill treble note like a penny whistle (Wikipedia, general species account).