Bald Eagle

The white-headed sea eagle of North America, national bird of the United States and a conservation comeback.

via Wikipedia: Bald eagle · see source

The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a large sea eagle found across most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States and northern Mexico. It lives near big lakes, rivers and coasts where food is plentiful and old-growth trees offer nest sites. Adults are dark brown with a white head and tail and a heavy yellow hooked beak. It is the national bird and symbol of the United States. Once close to vanishing from the contiguous United States, it has recovered so well that it was taken off the endangered species list in 2007.

Quick Facts

Genus: Haliaeetus
Species: leucocephalus

Facts from the source article.

Background

The name bald has nothing to do with baldness: it comes from an older sense of the word meaning white-headed. Carl Linnaeus described the bird in Systema Naturae as Falco leucocephalus. It is placed with the sea eagles and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle of Eurasia, which fills the same ecological role in the Old World. The two lineages split from other sea eagles by the Early Miocene at the latest. Two subspecies are traditionally recognised, a smaller southern form and a larger northern one, though they may simply reflect size changes with latitude under Bergmann's Rule.

Did You Know?

Its tree nests are the largest ever recorded for any animal species.
Immature bald eagles can be told from golden eagles by their larger heads and flat-held wings.
Its status was upgraded from endangered to threatened in 1995.