Booted eagle

The booted eagle (Hieraaetus pennatus, also classified as Aquila pennata) is a medium-sized mostly migratory bird of prey with a wide distribution in the Palearctic and southern Asia, wintering in the tropics of Africa and Asia, with a small, disjunct breeding population in south-western Africa. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. The booted eagle was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the eagle, falcons and relatives in the genus Falco and coined the binomial name Falco pennatus. Gmelin based his description on "Le Faucon Patu" or "Falco pedibus pennatis" that had been described and illustrated in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. Brisson had examined a specimen in the collection of Madame de Bandeville who was also known as Marie Anne Catherine Bigot de Graveron (1709-1787). The booted eagle is now placed in the genus Hieraaetus that was introduced in 1844 by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek hierax meaning "hawk" with aetos meaning "eagle". The specific epithet pennatus is Latin and means "feathered". The booted eagle has no recognised subspecies. Based on recent genetic research some authors reclassified this species to the genus Aquila, along with some or all other Hieraaetus species. As it is the type species of Hieraaetus, should any of the hawk-eagles have been retained in a distinct genus then a new name for that group would have been necessary. However, DNA research has shown it forms a monophyletic clade with Ayres's hawk eagle, Wahlberg's eagle, little eagle and the pygmy eagle and this clade is often treated as forming the genus Hieraeetus and most reference lists currently use H. pennata. Although some authors name a number of subspecies most now treat it as a monotypic species. Aquila minut described by Brehm (1831) is this bird.