Haliaeetus albicilla
date: label: Collection Date
content: 27 May 1887
name: label: Collector
content: Sharp
notes: label: Notes
content: I am researching the former distribution of the white-tailed sea eagle Haliaeetus albicilla (sometimes known as the 'Gray sea eagle', or 'Gray-headed sea eagle' in North America) in the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and Middle East. It is currently extinct in the region apart from a very small and inbred population on the modern Greek-Turkish border near the Evros delta, though it used to breed in for example Sardinia, Egypt, and Algeria. One source of information is egg collections - collected eggs are usually accompanied by information stating where and when they were collected. Egg collections have, for example, demonstrated breeding of several pairs on the Tigris River at Tikrit near Baghdad in 1919-24 (and by inference a population on the river to at least that date), which do not appear in the published literature. This has extended our knowledge about the former range of the species significantly. All this is by way of preamble. While searching the Smithsonian's online catalogue of egg sets, I came across the following record: H albicilla eggs, clutch of 3, stated to have been collected 'NE Labrador' by 'Sharp' in 1887. The record is interesting because it is outside the known breeding range of the species - though it is plausible, as there is a population on the other side of the Davis Strait in eastern Greenland. Ranging along the seasonal pack ice edge in winter and spring is known from the Okhotsk region, for example, providing a route by which spread across the strait may have occurred. Foraging along the seasonal pack ice edge (then much further south) is thought to be the means by which the species reached Iceland and then Greenland in early postglacial times. In my search for early records of the species in the Mediterranean and Middle East, I did come across scattered assertions in the mid-19th century suggesting that the species might be found in NE North America and had been seen in winter further south than Labrador; but all of it very vague and circumstantial – on the lines of X saw a bird he thought was H. albicilla and not a bald eagle H. leucocephalus. The obvious potential sources of error are a mistake in logging the location by the collector (possibly working from a ship such as a whaling vessel in the Davis Strait), a cataloguing mistake, or that the collector mistook bald eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus for Haliaeetus albicilla; however, NE Labrador is outside the present range of bald eagle This is my best effort at deciphering the egg slip text. Blue indicates printed parts, the rest is the handwriting. Sharp Colln. No. 2177 Set. 3. Gray Sea Eagle Locality N.E. Labrador Date May 27. 87 Incub. Slight Collector A. M. Gardeci n . Memo. In Cliff 35 f(t) above base driftwood Coarse (&?) fine thick lined with a l ??et bark -------------------------------------------------- The description of the nest site and construction materials in the Memo sound typical of a nest of the species in such a location, in any of the variants the ambiguity of the sentence - and uncertain reading of some of it - allow. The collector's surname fairly clearly starts 'Gard' but the rest is illegible and has that strange gap before the last letter, or conceivably last two letters. The only way forward would be to find his whole surname more legibly written on another egg slip – possibly collection numbers fairly adjacent to 2177 in the Sharp Collection, might have been collected by the same person and bought in together? With the whole name (and the 'M' as his second initial is not secure either, I'm inferring it from the way the 'M' in 'May' is written) there might be some chance of tracking down the individual and making inferences from that.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 8 Jan 2025
label: Specimen Count
content: 3
place: label: Place
content: Northeast, Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada, North America
setName: label: See more items in
content: Vertebrate Zoology
label: See more items in
content: Birds
publisher: label: Published Name
content: Haliaeetus albicilla
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Vertebrate Zoology - Birds Division
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 000000
label: Other Numbers
content: Field Number : 351 2177/3
label: USNM Number
content: B43803
taxonomicName: label: Taxonomy
content: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Falconiformes, Accipitridae
physicalDescription: label: Preparation
content: Egg(s)
label: Sex
content: unknown