The White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) is northern Europe's largest bird of prey, a huge, powerful raptor often described as "the flying plank" for its broad, rectangular wings, held flat rather than in a V in flight. It measures 74–92 cm in length with a wingspan of 193–244 cm, and weighs 3.5–5.0 kg in males and 4.5–6.9 kg in the larger females. Adults have a short, wedge-shaped, all-white tail, a heavy yellow bill and a head that grows progressively paler with age, sometimes nearly white, against a brown to grey-brown body; young birds are darker with variable pale mottling and only reach full adult plumage, with the white tail, at five to six years old.
The species gives a resounding, rhythmic "klick-klick-klick" call near the nest, along with a gull-like "klä-klä-klä." It builds an enormous nest of branches — up to 2 metres wide and 3 metres deep — in a large, old tree, most often a pine, near a coast, archipelago island or lake, reusing the same nest for years or decades; egg-laying begins remarkably early, in February or March, with the female laying 1–3 eggs and incubating for 38–42 days. An opportunistic hunter, it takes fish such as pike, perch and salmon for roughly half to two-thirds of its diet, along with seabirds like eider and long-tailed duck, small mammals and carrion, which becomes especially important in winter. It breeds along Sweden's coasts and around its major lakes, including Vänern, Vättern and Mälaren, and is a resident that stays near its territory year-round. Having fallen to fewer than 50 pairs in the 1970s through persecution and pesticide-driven eggshell thinning, the population has recovered dramatically, reaching around 1,000–1,200 breeding pairs by 2024, and was reclassified as Least Concern in 2025.
Read about this species in Swedish →