The mountain hawk-eagle (Nisaetus nipalensis) or Hodgson's hawk-eagle, is distributed through the Himalayas. Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801-1894) was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. It is also known as the feather-toed eagle – a reference to its feathered tarsus (small bones that support this part of the foot) which marks it as a member of the subfamily Aquilinae. Mountain Hawk Eagles are brown from above with a rufous head and a black, pale-tipped crest. The belly and underwing coverts have dark brown streaks. The tail has three bands and is grey-brown from above and white below. The second-largest of Asian hawk eagles, the Mountain Hawk Eagles live from the Himalayan Mountains to Japan and the Russian Far East.
Mountain hawk eagleMountain hawk eagle