page_title: Bonelli's eagle
section_title: Rabbits and other lagomorphs
hierarchical_section_title: Bonelli's eagle / Behaviour and dietary ecology / Rabbits and other lagomorphs
caption_attribution_description: Latina: Oryctolagus cuniculus
context_page_description: The Bonelli's eagle is a large bird of prey. The common name of the bird commemorates the Italian ornithologist and collector Franco Andrea Bonelli. Bonelli is credited with gathering the type specimen, most likely from an exploration of Sardinia. Some antiquated texts also refer to this species as the crestless hawk-eagle. Like all eagles, Bonelli's eagle belongs to the family Accipitridae. Its feathered legs marked it as member of the Aquilinae or booted eagle subfamily. This species breeds from southern Europe, Africa on the montane perimeter of the Sahara Desert and across the Indian Subcontinent to Indonesia. On the great Eurasian continent, this species may be found as far west as Portugal and as far east as southeastern China and Thailand. It is usually a resident breeder. The Bonelli's eagle is often found in hilly or mountainous habitats, with rocky walls or crags, from sea level to 1,500 m. Habitats are often open to wooded land and can occur in arid to semi-moist climate. This eagle, though it can be considered partially opportunistic, is something of a special predator of certain birds and mammals, especially rabbits, galliforms and pigeons.
context_section_description: More than any other, the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is considered the most important prey species for most European Bonelli's eagles. In the largest European studies, the rabbit is usually the leading prey species: such as in Catalonia, Spain where rabbits comprised 22.54% of 2254 prey items (and 33.3%  of the prey biomass) and in Provence, France where rabbits made up 16.4% of 2742 prey items. In the third largest western European study, rabbits were secondary in number to pigeons (at 18.4% of 1641 prey items) but were still the largest contributors of biomass, at 33.2%. Even where non-native, such as the Aegean islands of Greece, the European rabbit dominated the foods of this eagle, comprising 40.8% by number and 46.6% by biomass of the foods. In Spain, it was found that about three-quarters of studied floating juvenile Bonelli's eagles were hunting rabbits almost exclusively, apparently as they were easier to capture despite their larger size than bird prey. Research determines that Bonelli's eagle are often attracted to scrub areas during hunting forays to catch sight of rabbits foraying out of vegetative cover. Since young juvenile and yearling rabbits are forced out to more open feeding spots by dominant adult rabbits, they are disproportionately often selected by Bonelli's eagles and other avian predators. Rabbits become more commonly caught during the summer when the young rabbits tend to disperse. On the contrary, 86.2% of the rabbits taken in southwest Portugal were reportedly adults. Most rabbits caught by Bonelli's eagle were estimated to weigh between 500 and 1,500 g (1.1 and 3.3 lb) (from the size of a kit to a smallish adult) per Spanish studies, with an estimated average weight in Spain of 857 g (1.889 lb). A study in southeastern Spain estimated that the region's Bonelli's eagles claim about 337 rabbits during the breeding season and 237 rabbits during non-breeding during the course of a year, so despite their heavy predation barely make a dent on the overall population of rabbits (effecting less than 2.5% of the population at peak). The native western European population of wild rabbit has been heavily depleted by myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease, having been reduced by an estimated 50-70%. While the overall numbers seemingly taken by them reduced by as much as a third between 1968 and 2009, on evidence Bonelli's eagle still sought them out and hunted rabbits preferentially even during the non-breeding season when their numbers dip to their lowest. In additional, significant numbers of other lagomorphs may be taken, extending to occasional Granada hares (Lepus granatensis) as well as accounts of Bonelli's eagles hunting European hares (Lepus europaeus) in the Greek isles and Indian hares (Lepus nigricollis) in the lower Himalayas.
caption: European rabbits are strongly favored prey for Bonelli's eagles in western Europe.
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