Steller's sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus)

Hokkaido Island, Japan, this superb raptor, known in Japanese as o-washi (great eagle), leaves Siberia at the end of summer to winter at the northeast of the island of Hokkaido. Ice floes are its banquet tables, where it consumes its meals of fish or feeds on the bodies of seals or whooper swans. These raptors specialize in catching fish hand the adaptations they display make this job as easy as possible. Combined with the pads on their feet, their curved, extremely sharp talons give them a better grip on slippery prey. Eagles generally hunt by gliding down from a height and snatching their prey in their claws. However, they do not disdain dead carcasses and readily direct their piracy at other fish-catching birds a very easy way to get a meal for little effort. (Photo by Gilles MARTIN/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)