White-tailed eagles over the Oslofjord

The white-tailed eagle (havørn, Haliaeetus albicilla) bred in the Oslofjord again in 2008, 126 years after the last confirmed nest at Hankøsundet in Østfold in 1882. The new pair raised one chick on the east cliff of Håøya, in Drøbaksundet. Wingspan runs up to 240 centimetres, the widest of any bird in Norway. Odds are best in the outer fjord south of Drøbak, and better in winter than in summer.

How big they actually are

Store norske leksikon gives the wingspan as 200 to 240 centimetres, body length 76 to 94 centimetres, and a weight up to 6.9 kilos for females, 5.4 for males. Females run heavier than males. It is Norway's largest bird of prey and the one with the widest wingspan of any Norwegian bird. When one crosses over the boat at altitude, the shadow reaches the water before you find the bird.

It is unmistakable from below: broad, rectangular wings held flat in a slow glide, fingered feathers at the tips, a short wedge-shaped tail that is white in adults and dark and pointed in young birds. The hooked bill is pale yellow and about the size of a small trowel. The voice sounds like a small dog barking in sequence.

How to tell it from a golden eagle

The golden eagle (kongeørn) turns up inland in Norway and almost never on the coast. Two giveaways: the golden eagle has feathered legs down to the toes, while the havørn's lower legs are bare, and the golden eagle has a long, square tail where the havørn has a short wedge. A very large eagle over open water in the Oslofjord is a havørn.

The common buzzard (musvåk) gets mistaken for a distant eagle more often than the golden eagle does. Wingspan settles it: the buzzard is around 120 centimetres, the havørn nearly double that. Seen together in the sky, there is no contest.

Why they almost disappeared

The havørn was hunted close to extinction in Europe. It was treated as a threat to sheep and lambs and was shot, trapped and poisoned through the 1800s and early 1900s. In Norway it vanished from everywhere south of Hordaland. DDT accumulating up the food chain made it worse in the 1950s and 60s: egg shells thinned, chicks died in the shell.

The turn came in 1968, when Norway gave the white-tailed and golden eagle full protection, the last country in Western Europe to do so. DDT bans followed through the 1970s. Populations recovered slowly, then quickly. In 1975 Norway still held around 400 of Western Europe's estimated 500 breeding pairs. By the 1990s the national count was roughly 1,500, and by 2013 the estimate was 2,800 to 4,200 pairs, against a world population Store norske leksikon puts at 10,000 to 30,000 pairs and rising.

Repopulating the old range in the south took longer, and the Oslofjord was the last stretch to fill back in. That happened in 2008.

What the curve is doing now

The 2013 figure is the one still quoted everywhere, and it is well over a decade old. Researchers at NINA report that the growth has levelled off after fifty years of climbing. Their long-running study area in Steigen, Nordland, went from fewer than ten occupied nests in 1977 to a peak of 119 in 2003, then down to 46 by 2023, against a calculated capacity of about 74 breeding pairs. The population is now held in check by competition for territory and prey, where it was once held down by persecution. Warming sea surface temperatures pressing on sea ducks, a core part of the eagle's winter diet, push in the same direction.

The Håøya pair

Håøya is a forested island in Drøbaksundet, the narrows where the inner Oslofjord constricts to about 1 km before opening into the outer fjord. It sits directly north of the Oscarsborg fortress. In 2008 a pair of adult havørn began nesting on the east cliff, facing Hurum. They raised one chick and it fledged. BirdLife Oslo og Akershus wrote the nest up in March 2009: the first successful breeding in the Oslofjord since 1882.

A year-round no-entry zone was set up around the nest. Current protection orders for nests and reserves are searchable in the Norwegian Environment Agency's Naturbase, and worth checking before you plan to go anywhere near one. The pair has bred most years since. Other pairs have followed. There are now confirmed breeding havørn in Ytre Hvaler Nasjonalpark (Akerøya, Vesleøya, Heia, the skerries around Torbjørnskjær), in Færder Nasjonalpark (Bolærne, the Færder archipelago), and periodically in the inner fjord.

Where to see them

Outer fjord gives you much better odds than inner. The hotspots, from the boat:

• Drøbaksundet around Håøya. Year-round. Look up at the east cliffs. A perched eagle on a dead pine against the skyline is a silhouette you'll recognise.
• Ytre Hvaler Nasjonalpark. The skerries south of Torbjørnskjær, around Søndre Sandøy and Vesleøya. Multiple confirmed pairs.
• Bolærne and Færder NP. Regular sightings year-round, especially over the seabird colonies where the eider flocks concentrate.
• Verdens Ende / Tjøme. Land-based viewing from the outer headlands.

Winter is better than summer. From October through March the resident pairs are joined by birds moving south from northern Norway. Leafless forest also means better visibility of perched birds in the crowns. On a clear January day in the outer fjord you can sometimes see three or four in the air at once, circling over an eider flock and deciding which one to pick off.

How they hunt

They are lazy hunters, and the nickname Nordens gribb, the Nordic vulture, is earned: they scavenge as much as they hunt. Fish comes off the surface, mostly lumpfish and cod. Tired eider and sick seabirds get picked off the flocks, and carrion is taken from the shore. Healthy prey is rarely chased down, because the strategy is opportunity rather than pursuit. A grown eider duck is well inside what a havørn can carry off the water.

A useful trick: watch the eider. When a thousand eider ducks explode off the water all at once in a dense panic takeoff, look up. There is almost always a havørn working the flock somewhere above them.

Breeding seasonality

Pairs bond for life and use the same nest for decades. Nest-building begins late February. Eggs are laid mid-March. Incubation runs about 38 days. Chicks hatch late April and fledge late July into early August. Young birds are dark brown all over and take four to six years to reach full adult plumage, the white tail and the pale yellow bill. You can read a havørn's age from across the bay once you know what you're looking for.

The fjord they came back to

The fjord the havørn returned to in 2008 is a different place from the one they left in 1882. The water in Drøbaksundet is cleaner, but the cod stock has nearly collapsed. The inner harbour went from shipping yard to swimming beach. Eider, a substantial part of the eagle's diet, have been moved to the vulnerable category on the Norwegian red list. The eagle recovered faster than the food web it hunts in.

If you want to see one, go to the outer fjord. The full-day cruise reaches Drøbak, the narrows around Håøya and the outer islands beyond inside a single day. The captains point out eagles every summer; by late autumn they are the steady feature of the outer fjord's sky.

For the rest: read the porpoise guide or our seasonal wildlife overview.

Population figures are estimates that shift with each survey, and access restrictions around nests are set per site and revised. Last reviewed: July 2026.

I saw my first havørn over Håøya in 2018. Now we see them on probably one trip in three. They sit on the dead pines on the southwest side of the island, often the same individual eagle two days in a row.