Rotenberg el al. • HARPY EAGLE NESTING IN BELIZE 
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HG-1. Distribution of the Harpy Eagle (.Harpia harpyja) in Central and South America. Inset is the nest location in Belize. 
Distribution data provided by NatureServe in collaboration with Robert Ridgelv. James Zook. The Nature Conservancy 
Migratory Bird Program Conservation Intemational-CABS. World Wildlife Fund-US. and Environment Canada—WILD- 
SPACE, 
•Mesoamerican hotspot for biodiversity (Iremon- 
gerand Sayre 1994). We used the Belize Found¬ 
ation for Research and Environmental Education 
BFREE, www.bfreebz.org) field site as our oper¬ 
ations base. 
Our first direct evidence for breeding Harpy 
Eagles in Belize was the observation of copulations 
°f a mated pair in April 2008, We made these 
observations during 14.5 hrs of focal observations 
ov er 2 days from a mountain lookout established to 
observe a steep-sided valley for eagles; our first 
observation of the juvenile was also made from this 
location. The valley is mostly north-south. 2.5 km 
long by 0.5 km wide, and is characterized as 
primarily evergreen tropical forest (Beard 1944). 
We saw an eagle repeatedly returning to the same 
tree within the forest on 26 November 2010 and on 
the follow ing day at 0900 hrs we located the nest in 
this tree from the ground underneath it. The nest 
was 35 in from the ground in the crown of a Virola 
koschny tree. The nest was observed from a hill 
325 m distant and it was from this location that we 
