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Urgell is not a common place for the Balearic booted eagle, but here we have it and, for the first time, I have photographed it, as we can see in The Photos of the Readers of La Vanguardia.
Its preferred habitat is forests, but also meadows and cultivated fields, rarely far from wooded areas. When it comes to breeding, it looks for mountainous areas where the forest alternates with open areas.
Around September or October, they leave the breeding territory and spend the winter in the tropics (the European ones go to the African savannah), from where they return around April.
Eagles from Western Europe pass to Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar and those from Eastern Europe through the Bosphorus. In some exceptional cases they use the route from Sicily and Tunisia and the cases of those that do not cross the Mediterranean and spend the winter in southern Europe are even more exceptional, but with climate change nothing is often what it used to be.
It is not strange to have photographed it in full flight, which, somewhat oscillating, is reminiscent of that of the hawk. She always plans and spends most of the day flying. It is a territorial bird. Through aerial fights, it is capable of expelling other birds of prey from its territory, which is quite large.
Despite his size, he is a very skilled hunter. Capture prey in clearings in the forest. He flies high in circles until he spots prey. He then dives almost to ground level to catch her.
