Birdwatchers spellbound by Steller’s sea eagle sighting in Atlantic Canada

This Steller's sea eagle has trekked almost halfway around the world from its home about 8,000 kilometres away on the eastern coast of Russia.

The unusual odyssey of a rare eagle from Russia onto Texas, Quebec and finally Nova Scotia has birdwatchers both puzzled and spellbound.

This Steller’s sea eagle has trekked almost halfway around the world from its home about 8,000 kilometres away on the eastern coast of Russia.

Phil Taylor, a biologist at Acadia University, spotted the eagle on his way home after lunch with a colleague on Nov. 3, on the banks of the Avon River near Falmouth, N.S.

“And there was this bird. Just sitting there on the mud,” he said in an interview. “It’s quite a remarkable bird, very easy to identify.”

This bird is bigger than a bald eagle, with white shoulders and tail and a large orange bill. It has wingspan of up to 2 1/2 metres and can weigh up to 10 kilograms.

The Steller’s sea eagle is classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and about 6,000 remain in the wild, usually in Japan, China, Korea and on the eastern coast of Russia.

“It’s very distinctive, and I immediately recognized it because the same individual bird was seen earlier in New Brunswick, this year in July,” Taylor said.

Nick Lund, a network manager for Maine Audubon, who has been tracking the eagle’s travels, said the bird was first spotted in Denali National Park in Alaska last August, which is “unusual but not crazy” because it’s on the other side of the Arctic Ocean.