Description wikipedia

Ayres's hawk-eagle (Hieraaetus ayresii), or Ayres' eagle, is a medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. It is native to African woodlands. Its name honours South African ornithologist Thomas Ayres. The adult male has blackish upper parts that are mottled with white and usually has a white forehead and supercilium. The upper-wing coverts are similar. The tail is ashy grey with a broad black tip and three to four narrower dark bars. Primary feathers and secondary feathers are black. The underparts are white, with heavy dark brown spots and blotches on the breast and belly, becoming sparser on the thighs and vent. The legs are well-feathered and pure white. The under-wing coverts are brown and marked with white, and the underside of flight feathers is dark and heavily barred lacking any noticeable grey patch. The eyes are yellow to orange, the cere and feet yellow, and the bill is bluish horn coloured becoming paler towards the base, with a black tip. This species has a small but at times pronounced crest. The males are smaller than the females, darker and usually more densely spotted on the underparts, and have a smaller amount of white on the forehead and supercilium. There are two phases, the normal as described above and a melanistic phase, which is mostly black with white markings. The juvenile Ayres's hawk-eagle is dark brown on the back and coverts, similarly dark on the crown, slightly paler necked, largely white below from the throat to the crissum and legs with sparse dark brown markings variably along the chest, belly, and flanks. When maturing, the young hawk-eagles often manifest a duskier, browner colour with somewhat of a rufous cast from below before moulting in its mature, adult plumage. Mostly the species is considered confusable with the African hawk-eagle which is larger and lankier with a more protruding head, a longer tail, more sparsely marked underparts, and more heavily marked wings with a white window above. It shares white "landing lights" at the fore of the wings with the similarly sized booted eagle but that species is usually rather differently marked overall (either paler and browner or all dark in dark morphs) and also similarly sized black sparrowhawks are mentioned as a confusion species but sparrowhawks are rather differently proportioned with bare, dull green-yellow legs.