A medium-sized, brown eagle with yellow eyes, a large angular head, pale legs, and a brown-and-white-banded tail. In flight, the brown-and-silver underwing pattern is distinctive. It is sedentary and nomadic in savanna, plains, and semi-desert, where it mostly hunts snakes from perches, but it also eats other vertebrates. Immatures could be confused with immature Black-breasted Snake-Eagles, but the latter are rufous--not brown--and have a different underwing pattern.