Unlike the Spanish imperial eagle, the eastern imperial eagle is fairly strongly migratory in most of its range, though a variable amount of residency or very local wandering during winter in the western and southern parts of its range may lend it to be described as a partial migrant. The species has been recorded overwintering as far north as Mongolia. In Bulgaria, of three post dispersal juveniles, two wandering within the country and only one migrated a long distance to Israel. Migratory movements occur during fall any time from September to November and in spring anytime from February to May, shifting earlier in the fall and later in spring the farther north that the eagles breed. Differentiating the large areas use merely for passage migration or vagrancy from regular wintering grounds can be difficult. Though typically seen in very small numbers at main raptor migration sites the species may occur as a passage migrant through much of the Middle East down to Yemen, with pockets of wintering eagles in Israel, northern Jordan, central Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, northeastern Iraq and adjacent southwestern Iran. A radio-tagging study of a few wintering eagles in Arabia found they returned variously to Russia in four cases and Kazkhstan and China in a single case, with a range of ground covered in spring migration of . The eastern imperial eagle winters locally and in quite small numbers in Africa's Nile valley, mostly being reported in southern Sudan, central Ethiopia and northern Kenya, irregularly down as far as southern Kenya and once even northern Tanzania. Most migrants to Africa apparently originate in the western part of the breeding range such as Europe. Further east, such as the imperial eagles that breed around Lake Baikal, will generally migrate to south Asia. Moderate to quite low numbers are usually noted of this species at migration sites in the Himalayas. The eastern imperial eagle winters fairly broadly in the Indian subcontinent, from eastern Pakistan, eastward through southern Nepal to Bangladesh and down as far south in India as the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and northwestern Jharkhand. Other semi-regular wintering areas include southern Bhutan, Thailand and north Indochina (recorded across Chinese border in southwestern Yunnan) and spottily in east China where wildlands still occur. Occasionally, wintering birds are known to occur in the central Cambodia and discontinuously in Laos and Vietnam as well as in the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and southern Japan (mostly Honshu). Vagrants have been reported in over 20 countries, mainly in Europe, including Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Italy.