This "proto-spotted eagle" probably lived in the general region of modern-day Afghanistan, and split into northern and southern lineages when both glaciers and deserts advanced in Central Asia at the start of the last ice age.

The buff colour of the fulvescens phenotype is usually contrasted with diffuse dark coloring around the eyes, on the leading edges of wings, and more rarely and sparsely on the chest.

These intermediate types may show the typical dark brown to black on the upper body, but in flight display pale mottled grey wing linings, or even normal coloration apart from the contrasting paler underbody.

They always show an obvious row of spots along the upperwing coverts, forming clear wing bars tail and flight feathers, except the outer primaries.

It is not unusual for adults to have slightly paler wing linings, similar to lesser spotted eagles, but only a single (not double) whitish crescent at the base of primaries.

Below, juvenile greater spotted eagles have largely black (apart from the creamy crissum) wing linings contrasting with paler grayer-soot flight feathers.

The size difference is up to 26% linearly, and females can be as much as twice as heavy as the males, making them rival the martial eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) as possibly the most sexually dimorphic member of the Aquilinae.

[4] The most common call, often heard during intraspecies conflicts, is a soft, one-syllable, penetrating, high-pitched, urgent whistle, variously transcribed as kyack, kluh, tyuck, or dyip.

[4] The juvenile usually lacks the pale nape patch of the lesser spotted eagle, but it is sometimes present, "albeit only slightly paler than rest of plumage and never ochre or orange".

[5] The Indian species is smaller (similar in size to the lesser spotted eagle), somewhat narrower-winged and longer-tailed, with primary fingers more deeply cut and square-ended.

Although visually similar at a distance, the steppe eagle has bolder, more extensive barring on the greyer flight feathers, complete lack of carpal arcs below, paler throat and nape, and larger but more diffuse primary patch.

[4] It also breeds in central and southeastern Europe; however, it is highly restricted to small, non-contiguous pockets in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria,[44] Romania, Serbia, and Hungary.

[86] Although typically scarce while breeding in areas modified by heavy human development, they have been seen hunting over cultivated land in Estonia and migrating over lowland farms in the Czech Republic.

[89] In the Mediterranean Basin, a study found that the preferred habitats of wintering greater spotted eagles were salt marshes and coastal lagoons with freshwater areas.

[29][14][83][90] In Arabia, they are largely found now in manmade habitats—such as sewage farms, reservoirs, and agricultural land—since the native mangrove and Phragmites reed-beds that once lined the coastal bays have been almost entirely eliminated.

Western breeding birds also regularly end up in North Africa, with a few in Morocco, Egypt, the Nile Valley, Sudan, Ethiopia, and occasionally points further south.

[108] The southernmost migration record of a greater spotted eagle was one that traveled 9,270 km (5,760 mi) from the Biebrza National Park in Poland to Zambia in southern Africa.

[4] Beyond mammals and birds, the greater spotted eagle will sometimes prey on amphibians, reptiles (mainly small-to-mid-sized snakes), and occasionally small fish and insects.

[116] Over 8 years of study in Natural Park of El Fondo in the Spanish province of Alicante, almost entirely large prey was taken, with few to no small rodents (such as voles).

Like most other wintering migrant raptors here, like milvine kites, the greater spotted eagle becomes a highly opportunistic feeder that shows a preference for easily attainable foods.

The Bharatpur greater spotted eagles show a slight preference for slow-moving prey, but also take fast flying birds like waders and ducks.

An eagle will test a flock of coots by flying low over the water, continually "buzzing" the birds,[further explanation needed] until it can attack an isolated individual.

[5][121][122][123][124] In the Indian subcontinent as a whole, greater spotted eagles are known to freely scavenge carrion, as well as feed on frogs (especially Indus valley bullfrogs), chameleons, Calotes lizards, snakes, rodents, and small mammals.

[131] As such, the lesser spotted eagle tends to nest in slightly drier environments, usually somewhat away from wetlands and floodplains, adapting rather more readily to patchwork areas where human development has occurred.

The greater spotted is the least likely of the three to visit carrion or carcass dumps; but, on the Indian subcontinent, they all heavily share food sources such as nestling water birds.

[146] Furthermore, in well-suited Russian habitats, nests were said (at least historically) to be found every 1.6 km (0.99 mi) of riverside, with fairly consistent pair reuse in following years.

[3] Climate changes at the conclusion of the last ice age (at some point early in the Holocene) permitted forest growth where there were once grassy boundaries, allowing the two species of spotted eagles to expand into each other’s ranges.

Interbreeding is mostly determined via conjecture in European Russia, which is roughly the eastern limit of the lesser spotted eagle’s range and thus where hybridization possibly occurred most recently.

[163][164] Despite maintaining a fairly vast breeding range—covering at least 9 million square kilometres in a band from the Baltic Sea in Europe eastward to the Pacific Ocean with minor outposts in the Indian subcontinent—this eagle occurs at extremely low densities.

[174][175] The amount of usable manmade habitat has shrunk in Thailand with a change to dry season rice field cropping and the creeping presence of urbanization, along with probable rodenticide usage and other poisonings, likely harming the number of the species able to winter there.