The Harpy eagle is a big bird of prey (length of 86 cm) with a
double crest. With the Phillipine Monkey-eating eagle it is
thought to be the strongest eagle of the world, both with
enormous claws, suited to pull apes out of a tree. The harpy
eagles then fly with their prey to a branch to eat them. They are
also strong enough to eat other large mammals, like sloths. They
hunt from a look-out post in a high tree and fly swiftly in
between the trees of the rainforest. They pull their prey from a
branch while flying. The number of harpy eagles (in South and
Central America) is probably reduced due to hunting and the loss
of suitably large areas of undisturbed forests by logging and the
slash and burn practice for farming. But still large tracks of
forest exist, like the Central Suriname Nature Reserve (CSNR) of
more than 1.000.000 ha. Nests are build in high trees and one or
two young are raised.
The photo above has been made by Eric Thomassen on the Kabalebo
river in the west of Suriname in November 2007. The bird was
wounded by something in the river, crawled upon the riverbank and
flew away. Aloysius Biervliet made a short video near Palumeu, Surinam, in
1996 of a young Harpy eagle, that is almost in an adult plumage,
but without a crest. It eats a large Iguana of which you mainly
see the tail. The video is shot from a boat, so it is a bit
shaky. A still of the same bird is right below this text.
A couple of Harpies nested high in a tree in the Raleighfalls
nature reserve in the CSNR (Central Suriname Nature Reserve) in
Suriname. They bred in 2000 and 2002 and raised one chick in both
cases. After the young of 2002 fledged, the young of 2000 was
still around and was fed by the parents once in a while. Below
the still are two pictures made by Sue Boinsky in the Raleigh
Falls nature reserve in March 2003, when she was doing research
on monkeys in the reserve. She saw this young bird in its nest
about a year before this picture was taken and baptized it Willi.
Willi is obviously very curious. It was rather easy to see in
2003 but the parents were seldom seen then. Then follow some
pictures taken in 2005 of an almost adult bird on the same nest
by Candy McManiman in 2005.
Below the map are some adult Harpies that were photographed by
Suzette Eeeltink (3) and Huub Sanders (2) near Kayser airstrip in
2006 and the last one by Roberto Plomp in 1998, all photos from
Suriname where Harpies are still regularly seen.
I only once saw a Harpy Eagle during my seven years stay in Suriname, so I suppose it is quite rare here (and it is an expert in hiding). But birding groups that visit Palumeu and the Raleigh falls see a harpy eagle about 1 in 3 times. Sometime ago it did even come near to the capital Paramaribo, as you can see on the map below.
All photos on this page were made in Surinam. More photos of birds of prey of Suriname can be found on other pages.
Each small square indicates the observation of at least one of these birds in Suriname, the medium ones at least 4 observations on different days and the largest ones 10 or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest.
| Distribution in Suriname (explanation) | |
| Coastal area |  |
| Savanna | |
| Forests | |
| Mountain forests | |
| Sipalawini savanna |  |
Names in:
Many more bird of prey pictures from Suriname
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