[2] The Verreaux's eagle lives in hilly and mountainous regions of southern and eastern Africa (extending marginally into Chad, Mali and Niger), and very locally in the Middle East.

When hyrax populations decline, the species have been shown to survive with mixed success on other prey, such as small antelopes, gamebirds, hares, monkeys and other assorted vertebrates.

[2][3] Like all eagles, this species belongs to the taxonomic order Accipitriformes (formerly included in Falconiformes) and the family Accipitridae, which may be referred to colloquially as accipitrids or raptors.

[3][11][13] The small-bodied Wahlberg's eagle (H. wahlbergi) has been traditionally considered an Aquila species due to its lack of change from juvenile to adult plumage and brownish color but it is actually genetically aligned to the Hieraaetus lineage.

The feathers of the upper-tail and upper-wing coverts are brown with white streaks in young birds, while the other tail and wing quills are nearly black.

No other accipitrid shares the mottled brownish body, blackish wings with large white patches or contrasting whitish, rufous and golden color around the head and neck.

[15] Southeastern Africa is the heart of the Verreaux's eagle range: they are found in most mountain ranges in Malawi but for the Nyika Plateau, the Mafinga Hills and the Lulwe Hills,[32] in Zambia (especially the escarpments bordering Lake Kariba to the gorges below Victoria Falls), in Zimbabwe (especially east of the central plateau),[33] Mozambique, Eswatini,[34] Lesotho and down into South Africa, where they largely inhabit the Karoo, along the cliffs of the Great Escarpment, the Cape Fold Mountains and Cape Peninsula.

[38][39] Elsewhere in Africa, the Verreaux's eagle may be found but tends to be rare and only spottily seen, such as in eastern Mali, northeastern Chad,[40] the Aïr Mountains of Niger[41] and southwestern Cameroon (where known only as a vagrant).

[24] Rock hyraxes are often difficult to observe for humans, other than a glimpse, but a Verreaux's eagle can fly out and then return to the nest with a kill in the matter of a few minutes.

Because of their greater weight, Cape hyraxes are frequently either consumed at the kill site (putting the eagle at risk of losing prey to competing predators or to attack by large mammalian carnivores) or are decapitated and brought to the nest or perch.

[64] Other prey types recorded have included small (mainly juvenile) antelopes, hares, rabbits, meerkats (Suricata suricatta), other mongooses, monkeys, squirrels, cane rats, bushbabies and lambs (Ovis aries) and kids (Capra aegagrus hircus).

[15][65] Avian prey ranging in size from 102.6 g (3.62 oz) alpine swift (Tachymarptis melba) to 7.26 kg (16.0 lb) adult male Denham's bustards (Neotis denhami).

[16][66][67] In Tanzania, out of a sample size of 41 from 26 nests, 53.7% of remains were of hyraxes, 29.3% of francolins, guineafowl and chickens, 12.2% of antelopes, 2.4% of hares and rabbits and 2.4% of mongoose.

[15][24] In South Africa, the commonest foods were (in descending order of preference): Cape hyrax, Smith's red rock hare (Pronolagus rupertris), meerkat, mountain reedbuck (Redunca fulvorufula), goats and sheep, scrub hare (Lepus saxatilis), Cape francolin (Francolinus capensis), helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris), yellow mongoose (Cynictis penicillata) and Angulate tortoise (Chersina angulata).

[2] From 1997 to 2005 in the same area, non-hyrax prey (each representing less than 10 out of 1550 prey items at nests) included white-tailed mongoose (Ichneumia albicauda), steenbok (Raphicerus campestris), domestic goat, vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), Jameson's red rock hare (Pronolagus randensis), helmeted guineafowl, Swainson's francolin (Pternistis swainsonii), Natal francolin (Pternistis natalensis), southern red-billed hornbill (Tockus rufirostris), rock pigeon (Columba livia), white-necked raven (Corvus albicollis), leopard tortoise (Stigmochelys pardalis) and giant plated lizard (Gerrhosaurus validus).

[51] In the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden of South Africa, the primary prey found around nests after a perceptible hyrax decline has become helmeted guineafowl and francolins, followed by cane rats, rabbits and dikdiks (Rhynchotragus ssp.).

Some of these may consist of genets, mongooses, felids, bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis) and even black-backed jackals (Canis mesomelas), apparently carnivores can become more significant in human developed areas.

[60][72] A Verreaux's eagle was observed to hunt and kill a mountain reedbuck lamb estimated to weigh 15 kg (33 lb).

The crowned eagle, a forest-dwelling species, is primarily a perch-hunter and can spend hours watching for prey activity from a prominent tree perch.

Neonate rock hyraxes may fall prey to mongooses and venomous snakes like Egyptian cobras (Naja haje) and puff adders (Bitis arietans).

[83] Cases where Verreaux's eagles have swooped at leopards are not likely competitive but are more likely to try to displace the cat from their territory, and such attacks have occasionally had fatal results for the birds.

[2][50][85][86][87] The Matobo Hills reportedly has one of the greatest breeding densities known of any large eagle and territories are extremely stable through seasons and years.

That is the young wander relatively widely once dispersed from their parent's territory but the adults generally remain sedentary on their home range for the remainder of their lives.

[24] In the Matobos, the species is near the breeding population capacity level with almost unlimited nests that are rather unevenly distributed among available jumbles of rocky kopjes.

However, predation is believed to be normally quite rare, due to the combination of factors such as the inaccessibility of most nests by foot (thus cutting off all but the most nimble mammalian carnivores) and the bold defenses of the parent eagles.

[9] The Verreaux's eagle is considered an “obligate cainist”, that is the older sibling normally kills the younger one (in more than 90% of observed nests), by either starvation or direct attack.

[9] Siblicide is regularly observed in raptorial birds, including unrelated families like owls and skuas and is common, even typical, in Aquila eagles.

[15] Unlike the other two big African eagles, they do not often partake of much carrion, so are at little risk of poisoning from carcass left out to control jackals.

[69] Perhaps the greatest concern for the species is when rock hyraxes are locally hunted by humans for food and skins, leading to likely declines and requiring the eagles to either switch to other prey or have their nesting attempts fail.

[15] In the Sisulu Botanical Garden, artificial feeding has been contemplated to maintain a breeding pair in the face of continuing declines of available wild prey.