Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Order Accipitriformes
Family Accipitridae
Subfamily Accipitrinae
Adult.— Head, neck, and tail white; rest of plumage dark brown.
Immature, second or third year.— Head and neck blackish; rest of upper parts mixed grayish-brown and blackish; under parts mixed white and dark.
Immature, first year.— Whole plumage nearly uniform black; under parts more or less spotted with whitish.
Nest, on tall trees, sometimes on cliffs.
Eggs, white.
The Bald Eagle is a permanent resident of the lower Hudson Valley and along Long Island Sound, and a rare winter visitant in southeastern New Hampshire. It is a summer resident of the Maine coast and of some of the large lakes of northern New England. Elsewhere in New England it is a rare migrant, occurring in May and at almost any time during the summer. It frequents bodies of water at all times, feeding on the dead fish and other refuse cast up on the shore.
An old bird, with white head and tail, is unmistakable; in the brown immature plumage the eagle can be told from one of the larger hawks only by its great size and by its proportions. The wing is twice as long as the tail, so that the whole extent of the spread wings from tip to tip is six or seven times the length of the tail.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)