White-tailed kite a spectacle in the sky
My wife Kathy aimed her camera toward the sky at a lovely white bird hovering over a coastal field, its wings fluttering in the breeze like a child’s paper kite.
Perhaps that’s why the bird became known as a white-tailed kite. It swayed this way and that, hovered, then plunged to the ground like a crashing kite.
The bird was not guided by a hand-held string, but by its own sleek wings and body. It plunged to the ground not by a sudden loss of altitude, but by its own power-dive to capture a rat scurrying in the grass.
At one point, the bird’s dark shoulder patches earned it the name blackshouldered kite. But it reverted back to whitetailed kite in the early 1990s because of morphological and behavioral differences from similar kites in Europe and Africa.
Although about the same size as a northern harrier, the white-tailed kite is leaner, with a small, dainty head. It sails aloft as though bouncing in the air with wings held in a dihedral or V-shape.
The bird frequently hovers 15-20 feet above a field, its tail angled toward the earth as it surveys the ground for rodents, lizards and small rabbits. A critter may scurry under a clump of grass to escape the bird’s prying eyes. But good luck. The kite will circle until it spots the prey and grabs it.
This time of year, a pair of male and female kites will team up while soaring to spy a big rat or other animal and catch it for a meal.
The kite’s white underside, tail and head are
a marked contrast to its gray crown, back and upper wings. A distinctive characteristic is the inkblack color spreading under the outer flight feathers.
Yet most of us pick out the black shoulders, making us prone to call it by its former “black-shouldered” name.
I like looking through binoculars at the bird’s red eyes encircled by black teardrop-shaped masks against porcelain-white faces. This would make the bird appear angelic were it not for its devilish skill as a bird-of-prey.