Aquila chrysaetos
In the Arctic fringe of Eurasia, golden eagles occur along the edge of the tundra and the taiga from the Kola peninsula to Anadyr in eastern Siberia, nesting in forests and hunting over nearby arctic heathland. Typical vegetation is stunted, fragmented larch woodland merging into low birch-willow scrub and various heathland. In the rocky, wet, windy maritime climate of Scotland, Ireland, and western Scandinavia, the golden eagle dwells in mountains. These areas include upland grasslands, blanket bog, and sub-Arctic heaths but also fragmented woodland and woodland edge, including boreal forests. In Western Europe, golden eagle habitat is dominated by open, rough grassland, heath and bogs, and rocky ridges, spurs, crags, scree, slopes and grand plateaux. In Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, Belarus and almost the entire distribution in Russia all the way to the Pacific Ocean, golden eagles occur sparsely in lowland taiga forest. These areas are dominated by stands of evergreens such as pine, larch and spruce, occasionally supplemented by birch and alder stands in southern Scandinavia and the Baltic States. This is largely marginal country for golden eagles and they occur where tree cover is thin and abuts open habitat. Golden eagle taiga habitat usually consists of extensive peatland formations caused by poorly drained soils. In central Europe, golden eagles today occur almost exclusively in the major mountain ranges, such as the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, and the Caucasus. Here, the species nests near the tree line and hunt subalpine and alpine pastures, grassland and heath above. Golden eagles also occur in moderately mountainous habitat along the Mediterranean Sea, from the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, to Greece, Turkey and Iraq. This area is characterized by low mountains, Mediterranean maquis vegetation, and sub-temperate open woodland. The local pine-oak vegetation, with a variety of Sclerophyllous shrubs are well-adapted to prolonged summer droughts. From Turkey and the southern Caspian Sea to the foothills of the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan, the typical golden eagle habitat is temperate desert-like mountain ranges surrounded by steppe landscapes interspersed with forest. Here the climate is colder and more continental than around the Mediterranean. Golden eagles occupy the alpine ranges from the Altai Mountains and the Pamir Mountains to Tibet, in the great Himalayan massif, and Xinjiang, China, where they occupy the Tien Shan range. In these mountain ranges, the species often lives at very high elevations, living above tree line at more than , often nesting in rocky scree and hunting in adjacent meadows. In Tibet, golden eagles inhabit high ridges and passes in the Lhasa River watershed, where they regularly joins groups of soaring Himalayan vultures ("Gyps himalayensis"). One golden eagle was recorded circling at above sea-level in Khumbu in May 1975. In the mountains of Japan and Korea, the golden eagle occupies deciduous scrub woodland and carpet-like stands of Siberian dwarf pine ("Pinus pumila") that merge into grasslands and alpine heathland. The golden eagle occurs in mountains from the Adrar Plateau in Mauritania to northern Yemen and Oman where the desert habitat is largely bereft of vegetation but offers many rocky plateaus to support both the eagles and their prey. In Israel, their habitat is mainly rocky slopes and wide wadi areas, chiefly in desert and to a lesser extent in semi-desert and Mediterranean climates, extending to open areas. In Northeastern Africa, the habitat is often of a sparse, desert-like character and is quite similar to the habitat in Middle East and the Arabian peninsula. In Ethiopia's Bale Mountains, where the vegetation is more lush and the climate is clearly less arid than in Northeastern Africa, the golden eagle occupies verdant mountains.