Rare Pale Form of Juvenile - Lesser Spotted Eagle

Pale juvenile forms of the Lesser Spotted Eagle Clanga pomarina are rarely documented and to date nowhere mentioned in southern African literature. On a visit to the Kruger National Park in February 2017 we spent a couple of days in an area east of Satara photographing as many different colour forms of this species as possible. Good summer rains resulted in vast breeding flocks of Red-billed Queleas and these migrant raptors were gorging themselves on both nestlings and fledglings.

- Hugh Chittenden

Very few of the queleas’ colonial nests were close to the road, so we had to be content with fairly distant photos of raptors that were dotted around in dead trees scattered in the vicinity. One bird had particularly pale underparts, so I took it to be a bleached juvenile Tawny Eagle