Natural
History
Notes
on the Birds
Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, Kites, and
Harrier
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About the
categories
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Name
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Common name
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Food
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The main food category.
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Feeding Techniques
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How it acquires its food.
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Habitat
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What kind of area does the bird
live?
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Plumage
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Is there similarity between the male
and the female, between winter and spring, young and adult,
or are there variations in the plumage amongst the species.
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Distribution
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Approximately where it is found in the
United States.
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Breeding
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Unique aspects on how the species
breeds.
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About the Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Special notes on the status or natural
history of this bird.
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Notes from A. C.
Bent
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Selections from the Life Histories of
North American Birds, edited by
A. C. Bent.
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Name
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Food
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Fish
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Feeding
Techniques
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Diving from the air into the water to
grab fish with its sharp talons. A remarkable sight to
watch.
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Habitat
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Generally along both east and west
coasts, and can be seen in a large variety of both fresh and
salt water.
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Plumage
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The
male and the female similar plumage.
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Distribution
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Primarily along the coast of the
United States but also in interior areas. Population slipped
to very low numbers due to DDT.
Since the banning of DDT the Osprey has made an excellent
recovery.
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Breeding
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Both male and female raise the young
using large nests usually located high up in a tree or
structure. Lately has become very adaptive to human-made
artificial nest structures.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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C. S. Allen (1892) records the
following list of material that he personally observed in
the nests on Plum Island:
Brushwood, barrel staves, barrel
beads, and hoops; bunches of seaweed, long masses of kelp,
mullein stalks and cornstalks; laths, shingles, small pieces
of boards from boxes; parts of oars, a broken boat-hook,
tiller of a boat, a small rudder, and parts of life
preservers; large pieces of fish nets, cork, and cedar net
floats, and pieces of rope, some of them twenty feet in
length; charred wood, sticks from hay bales, and short,
thick logs of wood; a toy boat, with one sail still
attached; sponges, long strings of conch eggs, and eggs of
sharks and dogfish; a small axe with broken handle, part of
a hay rake, old brooms, an old plane, a feather-duster, a
deck swab, a blacking-brush, and a bookjack; a rubber boot,
several old shoes, an old pair of trousers, a straw hat, and
part of an oil skin 'sou'wester'; a long fish line, with
sinkers and hooks attached, wound on a board; old bottles,
tin cans, oyster shells, and large periwinkle shells, one
rag doll, shells and bright colored stones, a small fruit
basket, part of an eel pot, a small worn out door mat; wings
of ducks and gulls, sometimes with parts of the skeleton
attached, and one fresh crow's wing, as already related. A
strange feature was the frequent presence of bleached bones
from the pasture, as the ribs and long bones of sheep and
cattle, and especially sheep skulls.
Nearly all the old nests had masses of
dried cow dung, and large pieces of sod, with grass still
growing.
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Name
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Food
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Wide variety of small mammals. The
food the eagle eats depends on the season and what is
available.
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Feeding
Techniques
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Generally finds its prey while
soaring, and then dives onto the prey using its very sharp
talons to catch the prey.
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Habitat
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Open country, plains, and mountains.
Needs to have space to soar and look for food.
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
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Distribution
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Found mostly in the western United
States. This species is also found in Europe and Asia.
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Breeding
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Both male and female tend the nest and
bring food. Nest can be either in a tree or on a cliff
ledge.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Buteos refers to the genus of birds
that includes the Red-tailed
Hawk, Ferruginous,
Rough-legged,
Red-shouldered,
etc.
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Courtship: The courtship of the golden
eagle is much like that of the Buteos, to which it is
closely related. It consists mainly of spectacular flight
maneuvers, spiral sailings in ever-rising circles, in which
the birds frequently come close together and then drift
apart; as they pass they almost touch. Occasionally one will
start a series of nose dives on half-closed wings, swooping
up again between dives and giving vent to his joy in musical
cries. This form of nuptial play is indulged in by both
sexes and is kept up, more or less, all through the nesting
season. Perhaps it is only a form of joyful exercise. The
birds are apparently mated for life, and if one is killed
the survivor immediately seeks a new mate.
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Name
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Food
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Feeds on fish but also relies on
carrion and stealing food from Ospreys and other birds.
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Feeding
Techniques
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Looks for prey from a perch and also
while flying. An opportunistic hunter. See below for an
account of prey items in one nest.
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Habitat
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Perfers to be close to water. Young
birds can be found in a variety of places during migration.
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
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Distribution
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Returning to its original
distribution. Currently (2001) found primarily in the west
and the eastern coastline.
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Breeding
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Both parents raise young in a large
nest usually situated in a tree. Has to be around 4 to 5
years old before they breed.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Bent touches on a problem that has
been around for a long time: How to prove that a Bald Eagle
has taken live livestock, instead of taking livestock that
had already died.
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Food: The large amount of food found
in the nests of bald eagles containing young indicates that
the eaglets, even when small, are fed on much the same food
that the adults eat, or that the adults devour much of the
food that is brought to the nest, or perhaps both. Mr.
Pennock (MS.) found in a nest with two very young eaglets,
"certainly not over a few days old", an entire black duck, a
headless black duck, and a headless mullet that had weighed
1½ to 2 pounds. In another nest he found a partly eaten
lesser
scaup duck, an entire
horned
grebe, and three other grebes
more or less mutilated. Mr. Nicholson says (MS.) that the
amount of food found in the nests is astonishing, and often
much of it has not been touched. He lists rabbits, mostly
marsh rabbits, other undetermined mammals, turtles, coots,
Florida ducks, lesser
scaup ducks, pied-billed
grebes, little
blue herons, snowy
egrets, terns,
killdeers,
catfish (by far the most frequent species found and some up
to 15 pounds in weight), black bass, sargeantfish, crevalle,
pompano, and other fish. Under one nest he found between 40
and 60 skulls of mammals, about the size of rabbits. He has
never found snakes in an eagle's nest, nor has he ever seen
wool or bones of lambs, even in the heart of the sheep
country. There is no doubt, however, that bald eagles do
occasionally carry off lambs, as several good observers have
seen them do it, and the bones have been found in and under
their nests. Probably many of these were picked up dead, but
sheep herders generally regard eagles as destructive
enemies.
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Name
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Food
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It is no surprise that the Snail Kite
eats mostly, snails. The large apple snails. Also
supplements its diet with rodents, crabs and even a turtle
or two.
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Feeding
Techniques
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Uses its specially adapted
beak
to extract the snail from the
shell.
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Habitat
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The marshes of Florida
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have different plumage.
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Distribution
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While there is a strong population in
South America the only birds in the United States are found
in Florida. The population is threatened by the fluctuating
water supply in Florida and the diminishing wetlands.
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Breeding
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Both parents tend the young.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Bent compares the flight of the
everglade kite to the "marsh hawk" which is an older name
for the Northern
Harrier. Everglade Kite is an
older name for Snail Kite. Some day Snail Kite will be an
older name for a newer name given to this bird. Over the
first 30 years that I studied birds I knew the Great Egret
first as the American Egret, then the Common Egret and then
as the Great Egret. This is one of the challenges of
studying any animal science. An attempt is made to make the
name of the species more accurate and more descriptive.
There are not too many examples of a
species like the Snail Kite that eats only one type of food.
Ampullaria depressa is a former
scientific name for the freshwater
apple snail which now has the
scientific name of Pomacea paludosa.
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Food: The everglade kite has been well
named "snail hawk", for it feeds exclusively on the meat of
a large fresh-water snail (Ampullaria depressa),
which formerly abounded all over the Everglades and is still
abundant in some other fresh-water marshes and sluggish
streams in Florida and in many places in South America. It
is useless to look for this kite where these snails have
been killed off by drainage or drought, as in southern
Florida. Their presence can be detected by their pearly egg
clusters on the sawgrass or reeds. The kites search for the
snails in the open places in the marshes or in shallow
ponds, beating slowly back and forth, low over the ground,
after the manner of marsh
hawks, or hovering over the
water like a gull. When the snail is located the kite
plunges down to secure it and flies with it in its claws to
some favorite perch on a stump, post, low tree, or bush;
often an old deserted nest is used as a feeding station.
Here the snail is neatly extracted with the aid of the
kite's long hooked beak, admirably suited for the purpose,
and the shell is dropped unbroken. That the birds use the
same perch regularly is shown by the large number of empty
shells often found in such places, sometimes as many as 200
or 300. There is no evidence to indicate that this kite ever
eats anything but these mollusks.
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Name
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Food
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Small rodents
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Feeding
Techniques
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Hunts from the air and drops on prey
using its talons to capture it.
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Habitat
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Open fields; usually
wetlands.
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
Immature birds are
brownish.
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Distribution
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California and Texas
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Breeding
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Nest built at top of tree by both
sexes.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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One of the success stories is the come
back of this bird from the brink of extinction. I birded
extensively between the years of 1960 and 1995 in the area
that is talked about below and I witnessed the dramatic
increase in the population of the White-tailed Kite.
extirpated - eliminated from an area
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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The above name was applied to the
North American bird by Bangs and Penard (1920) to
distinguish it from the smaller South American race, to
which the name leucurits was originally applied. The
northern bird is larger, with longer wing and tail and
relatively wider tail feathers. They say of the two ranges:
"The small southern form ranges from Argentina and Chile,
northward to Venezuela; the large northern form from
California, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Florida,
southward through Mexico to British Honduras and Guatemala.
There is thus a wide area in southern Central America and
northern South America between the ranges of the two forms
as outlined above, where the species apparently does not
occur at all."
This gentle and attractive bird seems
to have become exceedingly rare, or to have been entirely
extirpated, in the eastern portions of its North American
range. During my six seasons, or parts of seasons, spent in
various portions of Florida I have never seen this kite;
once a special trip was made to a section where our guide
said they had recently nested, but no sign of them was
found. Donald J. Nicholson tells me that he has not seen one
there since 1910. We could not find it in southern Texas,
and I have no recent records of it there. In certain
sections of California it seems to be holding its own,
though exceedingly local in its distribution, and nowhere
universally abundant. I doubt if it ever was very abundant,
although Cooper (1870) referred to it as "quite abundant in
the middle districts of California, remaining in large
numbers during winter among the extensive tule marshes of
the Sacramento and other valleys", and Belding (1890)
considered it "still a common resident" about these marshes
"in the centre of the State." But Belding quotes Dr. B. W.
Evermann, as calling it "a rare resident" in Ventura County,
as early as 1886; and he quotes W. E. Bryant as saying that
"it is still a very rare resident" in Alameda County. It
seemed to be the general opinion, at that time, that the
white-tailed kite was a disappearing species. As a result,
it has since been rigidly protected by law and exempted from
collecting permits.
Now comes more recent light on the
subject, which is more encouraging. Dr. Gayle B. Pickwell
(1930) has published the results of his exhaustive study of
the literature and his field work in the Santa Clara Valley.
Referring to past and present conditions in that region, he
says:
In spite of the fact that Taylor, in
1889, wrote of the Kite, "I venture to assert that there are
not more than four pairs this year breeding within a radius
of seven miles of that city (San Jose)", today, forty-one
years later, there are still that many or more. *
*
Let us estimate that an average of
four pairs of Kites (too high an estimate for some, too low,
perhaps, for others) frequents each. We have then sixteen
pairs of Kites in this entire valley. Twenty pairs, forty
birds, I feel convinced, account for every Kite from Gilroy
to the Bay and from Mount Hamilton to the summit of the
Santa Cruz Mountains.
The Kite was certainly more numerous
in San Joaquin and Sacramento counties forty to sixty years
ago than it is now. In other regions where it was present,
especially in marsh districts, undoubtedly it has been
seriously reduced in numbers. The condition in hill sections
inhabited by it can be but guessed at. Here it probably has
suffered least. ...
This Kite is probably a dying species,
never within historical times having predominated as such
raptorial birds as the Desert Sparrow Hawk or Red-tailed
Hawk for instance.
Since the above was written Dr.
Pickwell (1932) has published a "requiem" for the kites in
this valley; whereas he estimated that there were possibly
16 to 20 of these kites in the Santa Clara Valley in 1928,
he now says: "This day (October 30, 1931) there cannot be
more than two or three, and all too possibly none." We hope
that this is a mere local condition.
His observations on the home life of
these kites were made in the foothills of the Mount Hamilton
Range in Santa Clara County:
The Slatore ranch lies in the
foothills whose summits are grass-covered with wild oats and
bromes, with scattered valley oaks and live oaks, and here
and there a cluster of California coffee berry (Rhamnus
californica) and gnarled Sam bucus. Rocky outcrops,
where more moisture may be trapped, have curious copses of
scrubby growths of toyon, holly-leaved cherry, sages and
sage brush; and the gullies lined with buckeye, California
laurel, and poison oak run down to Silver Creek where the
laurels and willows predominate. But the hills are mostly
smooth as velvet, golden velvet most of the year, and green
oaks are scattered over the velvet, like buttons on a buxom
vest. In three buttons on this velvet vest were occupied
nests of the White-tailed Kite.
That such a habitat is not an unusual
Kite home is shown by the fact that all the Kites of Santa
Clara Valley today are, excepting one or two pairs,
restricted to the lower foothills of the Mount Hamilton
Range and Santa Cruz Mountains, on either side of the north
end of the Valley. The exception is of not more than two
pairs that occur to the north of San Jose between that city
and the Alviso salt marshes. These frequent the cottonwoods
and eucalyptus trees of the Coyote Creek and, not
infrequently, are seen hunting over the treeless marshes at
the foot of the Bay in common with Marsh
Hawks, native there, and
Turkey
Vultures and Red-tailed
Hawks from the
hills.
Bendire (1892) says of their haunts:
"Their usual resorts during the breeding season are the
banks of streams or the fresh water marshes, especially if a
few scattered live oaks or willow groves are close by, and
their favorite nesting sites are the tops of live oaks,
although other trees are also made use of whose foliage
securely conceals the nest during incubation."
The impression I gained from men I
talked with in California and from my own limited experience
there was that this kite shows a decided preference for the
vicinity of water, fresh-water marshes and streams; in such
places it finds its food readily available all through the
year, and it probably does not wander far away even in
winter. According to Audubon (1840) it was found in similar
haunts in Texas and Florida.
Nesting: The white-tailed kite nests
in a variety of situations. Usually the nesting pairs are
widely separated, but sometimes several pairs may be located
near each other in favorable situations. Two of the nests
studied by Dr. Pickwell (1930) were in "valley oaks
(Quercus lobata) , and the third a coast live oak
(Quercus agrifolia). The three formed an oblique or
scalene triangle on the rolling hills with the longest side
320 yards and the others 200 and 175 yards respectively. To
anyone conversant, with the wide spacing of most raptorial
birds this juxtaposition of the Kite nest territories seems
unusual: indeed, so much in contrast with their
near-relatives, semicommunal." The data, which he compiled
from the literature cited, show that 11 nests were in live
oaks, 3 or more in unspecified oaks, 2 or more in sycamores,
and 1 in a maple. The heights from the ground varied from 18
to 50 feet; another that he measured was 59 feet. The nests
were made of sticks and twigs of oaks in most cases, one
being made of willow twigs. They were lined with grasses,
dry stubble, barley straw, weed stems, rootlets, or Spanish
moss. Some were described as flat, flimsy structures, and
others were large, wellmade, substantial, and deeply
hollowed. Of five references that describe nesting sites,
"two describe foothills (with oaks), two stream banks (or
marshes with live oaks and willow groves nearby), and one a
willow swamp."
Dr. B. W. Evermann wrote to Major
Bendire that his first nest "was near the end of one of the
topmost limbs of a cottonwood." Chester Barlow (1897), for
one season at least, indulged in the bad practice of robbing
the kites of their second sets. He found that they required
about three weeks, or from 19 to 23 days, to lay a second
set after the first set had been taken. These birds will
almost always make a second attempt to raise a brood, in
which they should not be discouraged, for whether they will
make a third attempt or not is an open question.
I can add a little from my limited
personal experience with the nesting habits of the
white-tailed kite, as two of the three nests I saw were in
situations different from any mentioned above. I was told
that there were about six pairs of these kites nesting on an
island in the Suisun Bay marshes. On April 15, 1929, my
informant, James Moffitt, took me there to investigate it.
It was a low flat island a mile or more square, mostly
covered with long, thick grass, quite marshy in places, but
largely dry. It was partially surrounded by a canal, which
we navigated in a power boat. Extending along the banks of
this canal in a curving line was a row of tall eucalyptus
trees over a mile long. It was in these trees that the kites
were nesting. As we approached we saw a kite sitting in the
top of a dead tree, so we landed; and, after a short search,
we saw what looked like a nest about 40 feet up in the thick
top of a eucalyptus. After we had rapped the tree several
times the kite flew off. It was a very uncomfortable tree to
climb, but I managed to reach the nest, which was firmly
lodged in the topmost crotch. I was surprised to find in it
four small young, recently hatched. The nest was well made
of small fine twigs, deeply hollowed, and profusely lined
with dry grass; it was rather bulky and filled the crotch
quite deeply. It had probably been used in previous years,
as these kites have often been known to repair and use their
old nests. Wishing to find a nest more conveniently located
for photography, we spent considerable time hunting through
the long row of eucalyptus trees; but, although we located
at least three other pairs of kites, we could not find
another nest. Although well hidden from below, the nests are
open from above and give the birds a good lookout; the birds
probably left the nests as they saw us coming.
Another nest was shown to me by M. C.
Badger on April 27, 1929. It was located in an extensive
tract of small willows and cottonwoods, mixed with a dense
tangle of underbrush and vines, growing over many dead or
fallen trees and branches, all of which covered a broad
sandy plain along a river in Ventura County. The nest was
not over 15 feet from the ground, yet well hidden in a thick
mass of tangled vines in the top of a small dead willow. It
was a well-made nest of coarse sticks and fine twigs, deeply
hollowed and lined, in the bottom of the hollow only, with
strips of inner bark. It measured 21 inches over all, and
the inner cavity was about 7 inches in diameter; it held
three eggs. One of the birds was seen in the vicinity, but
it did not come near the nest. As the eggs were warm, she
had probably slipped off when she heard us coming through
the thick brush. Another nest (pl. 17) that he showed me was
about 30 feet up in the topmost twigs of a small willow in
the middle of another extensive tract of willows,
cottonwoods, and thick underbrush.
Eggs: The eggs of the white-tailed
kite are among the most beautiful and richly colored of any
of the hawks' eggs; consequently they are greatly in demand
among oologists. The set usually consists of four or five
eggs, sometimes only three, and I have one record of six
eggs. In shape they vary from ovate to oval, and the shell
is smooth but not glossy. The white, or creamy-white, ground
color is usually largely, and often wholly, concealed by the
profuse markings of rich browns, large blotches of dark
"bone brown" or "liver brown", over washes or splashes of
brighter browns, such as "burnt sienna", "amber brown",
"hazel", "tawny", or "ochraceous-tawny"; some eggs are
finely spotted with the darker browns over the lighter
washes, or more rarely over the whitish ground color; in
some eggs the heaviest markings are concentrated at one end
and very rarely the rest of the egg or the entire egg is
mainly white; the splashes and blotches have a longitudinal
trend. The measurements of 50 eggs average 42.5 by 32.8
millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 45.3
by 33.3, 42.4 by 35.6 and 38.1 by 30 millimeters.
Young: Dr. Pickwell's (1930) evidence
"indicates that the incubation period is not less than 30
days. Young are in the nest about 30 days." Probably both
sexes incubate; the sexes are so much alike that this is
difficult to determine unless the act of nest relief is
seen; such an observation does not seem to have bcen made.
But both parents are known to share in the care of the young
and sometimes an exceptionally aggressive pair will swoop
down at the intruder. Chester Barlow (1895) relates the
following:
After leaving the female flew over and
around me a few times and was presently joined by the male,
both flying near and uttering a raspy, clacking note which I
had never heard before. This no doubt was giving vent to
their anger. Now and then the short, sharp whistle
characteristic of the bird was uttered. Soon the female flew
to an oak a short distance away and the male took up the
battle in earnest. Soaring away perhaps 100 yards he came
swiftly toward me almost on a level with my head until
within about ten feet when he would switch upwards. Then he
would soar up and swoop down at lightning speed, always
changing his course before reaching me. The rush of his
wings was plainly audible. Again he was joined by the female
but after a few attacks both flew to near-by trees where
they remained till I had departed.
The young, according to Dr. Pickwell
(1930), show, the usual reactions, common to all raptorial
birds, when too closely approached. "At first approach the
young kite spreads wide the wings and backs off with mouth
agape, emitting a rasping note. If the tormentor persists,
the bird thrusts its feet forward with a resultant dropping
back upon the tail. The third and last stage is to drop
completely on the back and to present the most impressive
weapons a kite has, the talons."
Plumages: The smallest young, such as
I found in the nest, are sparsely covered with short,
dull-white down, tinged with "pinkish buff" on the crown and
dorsal tracts. At a later downy stage Dr. Pickwell (1930)
found the young bird clothed in "heavy bluish down." A
nearly full-grown juvenal is a beautiful bird; the forehead
is white and the crown mostly "cinnamon", heavily streaked
with dusky; the back and scapulars are "hair brown" to
"drab-gray", broadly edged with "cinnamon", or white and
"cinnamon"; the tail is "pale to pallid mouse gray", with a
darker subterminal band and white tips; the lesser and
median wing coverts are brownish black, the latter tipped
with white; the remiges are "light to pale mouse gray",
mostly white-tipped, the primaries darker near the tips; the
under parts are white, heavily suffused with "cinnamon" on
the breast and less so on the belly; the lores are dusky.
Dr. Pickwell (1930) adds: "Toes and tarsus, yellow; beak and
claws, black; eyelids, blue; iris, brown."
This plumage is worn but a short time,
and the bright colors soon disappear by wear and fading. A
postjuvenal molt begins in July and continues through the
fall; it involves all the contour plumage and the lesser and
median wing coverts. Some November birds have nearly
completed the molt but are still largely brown on the back.
A January bird shows the last of this molt and is renewing
the scapulars and tail feathers. Except for the wing quills,
which are probably not shed until later, the young bird is
practically adult by spring.
Adults apparently have a prolonged
molt late in summer and in fall; a December bird has not yet
completed the molt of the wings and tail but is otherwise in
fresh plumage. I have seen South American birds molting
their flight feathers in July and October, their winter and
spring.
Food: The food of this kite includes
field mice, wood rats, pocket gophers, ground squirrels,
shrews, small birds, small snakes, lizards, frogs,
grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and other insects. Probably
very few birds and few of the larger mammals are taken, but
mainly the smaller vertebrates and the insects named. It is
evidently a highly beneficial species. Dr. Loye Miller
(1926) noted, from the examination of a well-filled
stomach:
"that both its appetite and its table
manners are far from dainty. Remains of four meadow mice
(Microtus) and an entire shrew (Sorex oracles) were
Identified In the contents of stomach and crop. The shrew
was absolutely entire. The largest mouse had been torn apart
In the lower thoracic region and the hinder portion bolted
entire with skin and fur in place. Two mouse heads had been
swallowed hair and all. The fore quarters of the mice seemed
to have been stripped of skin, but great masses of skin and
fur had been swallowed after stripping them off. Viscera and
small bones indicated that most of both mice had been eaten,
and there is no reason to believe that any part had been
discarded. Well cleaned bones from two other Microtus skulls
were still retained in the stomach.
Dr. Pickwell (1930) writes:
The Kite hunts, not by soaring and
searching from a lofty position as do Buteos, nor by the low
harrier method of the Marsh
Hawk, but by a rather erratic
scouting from a position intermediate between these two.
When prey is seen the bird "stands" with wings quiet. If the
air is moving sufficiently to permit it to "kite", as its
name would intimate its habit to be, or beats the wings
slowly from an angle well above the back. During such a
stand it drops its legs. If it stoops it makes no falcon
drop of lightning speed with wings drawn into a thin wedge
along the sides of the body, but keeps them up in a V angle
above and slips down with legs hanging and at a speed one
would never guess was more than fast enough to catch a
snail. But that they do catch prey, some of it very agile,
there is no doubt. And that this method is used to catch it
there is no doubt either, for they have been observed to do
so.
Laurence G. Peyton (1915) says: "One
morning, while working near the nest, my brother saw one of
the Kites returning from the direction of the river with
something in its claws. While still some distance from the
nest it began calling and was quickly joined by the other
bird. The first bird remained hovering in the air like a
Sparrow Hawk, while the other darted up underneath it, took
the food from its claws and returned to the nest while the
other sailed away."
Behavior: The flight of the
white-tailed kite is light, airy, and graceful; often it is
a pretty fluttering flight with quick wing beats, or a
stationary hovering flight like a sparrow
hawk; and at times it is quite
swift. I noticed that when the bird is soaring or scaling
there is a bend in the wing, as in the osprey. Dr. Pickwell
(1930) describes it as "with wings slightly raised and
down-curving at the tips." Also he says: "The leg-dangling
habit of the Kites is one of their most conspicuous
oddities. On the nesting territory the protesting birds flew
here and there nearly constantly, uttering their cries,
beating the air slowly with short strokes, the wings held up
at a sharp angle above the back, the legs dangling from a
point about the center of the body."
W. H. Hudson (1920) says of the South
American form:
Its wing-power is indeed marvellous.
It delights to soar, like the Martins, during a high wind,
and will spend hours in this sport, rising and falling
alternately, and at times, seeming to abandon itself to the
fury of the gale, is blown away like thistle-down, until,
suddenly recovering itself, it shoots back to Its original
position. Where there are tall Lombardy poplar-trees these
birds amuse themselves by perching on the topmost slender
twigs, balancing themselves with outspread wings, each bird
on a separate tree, until the tree-tops are swept by the
wind from under them, when they often remain poised almost
motionless in the air until the twigs return to their
feet.
Although ordinarily gentle birds,
these kites are often very pugnacious toward certain large
birds, crows and hawks, that invade their territory. Several
observers have seen them persistently drive away crows and
the various Buteos. Dr. Pickwell (1930) writes:
In fact many of our records of Kites
have come about because our attention has been drawn first
to a large hurried Buteo in the distance and glasses showed
there not only Buteo but Kites above swooping down, one,
then the other (Kites are nearly always in pairs), in huge
parabolas reaching a hundred feet or more above the harried
giant. Down one comes with a rush and swings up again.
Immediately after, the other one drops, then up, and so
around and around they alternate until the distance and blue
swallows up Buteo and tormentors. This game is played the
year around, in the breeding season and out. Perhaps, as
with the excitement that small birds display over the
discovery of an owl, there may be a meaning in the Kites'
pugnacity. It might well be that the contents of the Kite
nest, in the very top of its oak, concealed from below but
completely exposed from above, are a temptation to these big
hawks the Kites so persistently annoy. If so, then there is
something of significance in the fact that Turkey Vultures,
though they have always been, in the Kite territory, more
numerous than all other large birds, are never
molested.
Voice: Dr. Pickwell (1930) also gives
the best description of this bird's notes, as
follows:
The notes are several in number and no
one word or term describes them all. The most frequently
uttered is a spasmodic short whistle: keep, keep, keep. At a
distance it sounds like chip, chip, chip, or kip, kip, kip,
kip, or even more chicken-like, cheep, cheep, cheep. This is
the note that is given as the birds beat slowly here and
there with legs dangling, and it expresses the mildest
solicitude. Undoubtedly Dawson (1923) means this note with
his "clewk". The next is more highly pitched and longer, a
"plaintive whistle" in truth. It may be transcribed as kreek
or kreek. It may be as repeatedly and rapidly uttered as the
former and expresses greater solicitude. The last and most
solicitous, uttered usually only when an intruder is
climbing the tree to a nest, is a prolonged kee-rak or
kee-rek. This note comes at the end of a series of keep
notes. Its terminus is lower and almost guttural, reminding
me much of the whang of a focal-plane shutter. The notes of
the young are two. They have a mild, high-pitched kree-eek
like the adults, and when at the height of their
intimidation display they have a harsh scream uttered with
the mouth enormously agape. This reminds one much of the
rasping scream of the Barn Owl.
Field marks: The most striking field
mark of this kite is its whiteness; in the distance it seems
to be wholly white; it might easily be mistaken for a white
domestic pigeon, except for its peculiar flight. But it can
be recognized by its flight, described above, as far as its
outline can be seen. If near enough its black shoulders and,
at times, its dangling legs are diagnostic. As seen from
below, it appears wholly white with a dark crescent at the
bend of the wing and gray at the extreme tip; its tail is
decidedly rounded.
Enemies: Milton S. Ray has sent me
some extensive notes on his experiences with these kites in
several of the central counties of California, from the late
nineties up to 1932. He says that jays, magpies, or crows
will sometimes puncture or destroy the eggs in an incomplete
set. Once he saw a raccoon leaving a nest, and the eggs,
which it had contained previously, had entirely vanished. He
mentions a very loosely built nest, "so frail and open that
one of the four eggs partially fell through the nest."
Another nest "was so compactly built that it held water"
and, after a storm, the eggs were "almost submerged"; the
nest was subsequently deserted.
He agrees with other observers as to
the recent disappearance of these kites, saying: "Occasional
birds were recorded in the last decade but at the present
writing (1932) the birds seem to have disappeared from
almost every point simultaneously." As to the cause of its
decline, he says:
This Kite is peculiarly friendly and
unsuspicious and therefore exceptionally easy to shoot. This
is particularly true during the nesting period. Through a
mistaken belief that the bird preys on quail, ducks, and
other game birds the kites have been widely shot by hunters,
gamekeepers, and ranchers. 'the 'hunts" of gun clubs
instituted by the various cartridge companies to exterminate
owls, hawks, jays, and crows (these hunts are a curse of the
present generation) have been largely responsible for the
extermination of these beautiful birds. In a number of cases
I have actually been able to prevent the birds being shot.
In some instances I have found that the rather close
resemblances this kite bears to the similer gulls, as
Bonaparte's
and the kittiwake,
has also prevented it from being killed.
DISTRIBUTION
Range: The Southern United States
south to central South America; accidental in central and
northern States. Not considered migratory and now apparently
almost extinct in North America.
Although the white-tailed kite is a
transcontinental species, its range (in the United States)
is more or less discontinuous, there being great areas from
which it is practically or entirely unknown. The range
extends north to central California (Geyserville, St.
Helena, and Stockton); Oklahoma (Fort Arbuckle); and Florida
(near Lake Kissimmee). East to Florida (near Lake Kissimmee
and Fort Myers) ; eastern British Guiana (Demerara River) ;
eastern Brazil (Porto Real, Bahia, and Itarare) ; and
eastern Argentina (Concepcion, Baradero, and Buenos Aires).
South to Argentina (Buenos Aires); and Chile (Arauco). West
to Chile (Arauco and Santiago) ; northwestern Argentina
(Tucuman) ; northern Brazil (Forte de San Joaquim) ; western
British Guiana (Mount Rorainta); Lower California (San
Carlos and Cape Colnett); and California (Alainitos,
Saticoy, Santa Barbara, Hollister, San Jose, Santa Clara,
Lake Merced, Nicasio, and Geyserville).
The range as outlined is for the
entire species, but the United States form, E. l.
majusculus, is not known south of Lower
California.
Casual records: Audubon recorded the
white-tailed kite as breeding on the Santee River, S. C.,
but Wayne (1910) believes this to be an error. A specimen
was recorded from Martha's Vineyard, Mass., on May 30, 1910;
one was shot near Kenner, La., on October 11, 1890; Ridgway
reported a pair seen at Mount Carmel, Ill., during the
summer of 1863 or 1864; one was said to have been taken near
Ann Arbor, Mich., in September 1878, and one in Livingston
County on April 21, 1879 (Barrows, 1912) ; while it also has
been reported from northern California, as a specimen was
obtained about August 6, 1924, at Miranda, and there is also
a record from Red Bluff (C. H. Townsend, 1887).
Egg dates: California to Texas: 120
records, February 12 to June 21; 60 records, April 2 to 29.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Large insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
One method is to capture insects while
in the air, similar to a flycatcher. See below.
|
|
Habitat
|
Edge of woods.
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Southeast of the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest built at top of tree by both
sexes.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
This account presents us a fairly
remarkable image of these predators contorting themselves in
the air as they grab flying insects.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Food: Mr. Stevens says in his notes
that these kites feed on the wing, snatching locusts from
plants and seizing cicadas in flight. A flock of from 3 to
20 will sail about a person, a horseman, or a team,
traveling through grassy flats and bushy places, and seize
the cicadas as they are scared up. The insect is grasped in
the claws and eaten in the air. Usually only the abdomen of
the cicada is eaten and the remainder is dropped; the wings
and legs of locusts are often picked off and the remainder
swallowed. He has found the remains of toads, mice, and
young rabbits in the nests with young.
Audubon (1840) graphically describes
its feeding as follows:
He glances towards the earth with his
fiery eye; sweeps along, now with the gentle breeze, now
against it; seizes here and there the high-flying giddy bug,
and allays his hunger without fatigue to wing or talon.
Suddenly he spies some creeping thing, that changes, like
the cameleon from vivid green to dull brown, to escape his
notice. It is the red-throated panting lizard that has made
its way to the highest branch of a tree in quest of food.
Casting upwards a sidelong look of fear, it remains
motionless, so well does it know the prowess of the bird of
prey; but its caution is vain; it has been perceived, its
fate is sealed, and the next moment it is swept
away.
All writers seem to agree that the
Mississippi kite feeds almost exclusively on the larger
insects, such as cicadas, locusts, grasshoppers, crickets,
katydids, dragonflies, and large beetles, but small snakes,
lizards, and frogs are sometimes taken. Birds apparently are
never molested, and small birds show no fear of
it.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Small animals including small birds.
See below.
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Very agile flyer allows it to pursue
very well.
|
|
Habitat
|
Varied habitat.
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
; adults take 4 years to
obtain adult plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Large nest is placed midway in a dense
coniferous tree.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Food: Dr. A. K. Fisher (1893) gives a
long list of the food of the sharp-shinned hawk and then
summarizes it, as follows: "Of 159 stomachs examined, 6
contained poultry or game birds; 99, other birds; 6, mice;
5, insects; and 52 were empty." It is especially fond of
young chickens and domestic pigeons, and will make frequent
raids on the poultry yard, as long as the supply lasts, or
until a charge of shot puts an end to it. The larger females
are strong enough to carry off a half-grown chicken or an
adult pigeon. Herbert L. Stoddard (1931) has seen one carry
off a full-grown bobwhite; and other quails are easy prey
for it. R. B. Simpson (1911) has seen it pick a red squirrel
off a limb and "fly heavily away with its struggling victim,
holding it down as far away from its body as possible." He
also saw one attack a pileated
woodpecker, which was dodging
around a tree trunk and screaming; the hawk's career was
promptly ended by a charge of shot. C. J. Maynard (1896)
relates the following: These small Hawks are very bold and
will not hesitate to attack birds which are larger than
themselves, and I once saw one strike down a fully grown
Night
Heron that chanced to be
abroad by day. The Heron was flying from one island to
another across some marshes, when the Hawk darted out of a
neighboring wood and pounced upon him. The force of the
shock was so great that the slowly moving Heron fell to the
ground at once but, fortunately for him, in falling, he gave
vent to one of those discordant squawks which only a bird of
this species is capable of uttering, and which so astonished
and frightened the Hawk, that it completely forgot to take
advantage of its prostrate prey, but darted away; while the
Heron regained its feet, shook itself, and mounting in air,
flew wildly into the nearest thicket.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Mostly birds and additional small
mammals.
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Very agile flyer.
|
|
Habitat
|
Varied.
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Large nest is placed midway in a dense
coniferous tree.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
As with the Sharp-shinned Hawk, the
female is larger than the male. Various theories have been
developed to explain this reversal of the usual pattern of
the male being larger than the female.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Behavior: The flight of Cooper's hawk
is very similar to that of the sharp-shinned hawk, a low,
swift, dashing flight. It surprises its prey by a sudden,
swift dash, pouncing upon it before it has a chance to
escape. Its short wings and long tail give it such control
of its movements that it can dart in and out among the
branches of the forest trees with impunity, or dodge through
the intricacies of thickets where its victims are hiding.
Dr. Daniel S. Gage has sent me some notes illustrating its
crafty methods of approach. He was watching a robin at the
base of a tree in some thick woods when he saw a hawk come,
flying swiftly and keeping the trunk of the tree between him
and the robin; when close to the tree the hawk swerved
around it and barely missed catching the robin. Again he saw
a hawk approach a field of tall weeds, in which some small
birds were feeding, flying close to the ground behind a
fence, dash over the fence, and pounce on one of the birds.
On another occasion, a hawk had seen, while perched on a
distant tree, some chickens in a yard close to a house; he
flew low, behind the house until close to it, rose over the
house and pounced down on one of the chickens, which had no
chance to escape until he was right upon them.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Wide variety of animals including
mammals, reptiles and some birds. The food changes with the
territory.
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
|
|
Habitat
|
Diverse areas. Becoming more and more
suburbanized.
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
This species does vary greatly
throughout the country.
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Both sexes raise the young. Nest
usually has about 3 eggs.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
Compare these notes on the courtship
of Red-tailed Hawks with the mating behavior of the
Red-shouldered
Hawk.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Courtship: I believe that this and
other large hawks remain mated for life, but, if one of the
pair is killed, the survivor soon secures a new mate. The
birds are apparently in pairs when they arrive on their
breeding grounds, but they indulge in nuptial demonstrations
more or less all through the nesting season. I have seen a
pair of these hawks, in May when there were young in the
nest, indulging in their joint flight maneuvers high above
the woods where the nest was located; they soared in great
circles, crossing and recrossing each other's paths,
sometimes almost touching, and mounting higher and higher
until almost out of sight; finally one partially closed its
wings and made a thrilling dive from a dizzy height,
checking its speed just before it reached the woods. E. L.
Sumner, Jr., refers in his notes to such a flight: "About
ten times, while they were circling near together, the male
would lower his legs and adjust his circles so that he came
above his mate, and about four times he actually touched her
back, or so it seemed." M. P. Skinner says in his notes:
"These hawks at times performed wonderful evolutions high in
the air, either one bird alone or several at a time. Such
hawks would mount up to a high altitude, then half close the
wings and drop down on an invisible incline at great speed
only to open the wings again and shoot up at an equal angle.
This was repeated again and again while the hawk described a
series of deep V's and gradually passed out of sight in the
distance."
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Wide variety of vertebrates
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
|
|
Habitat
|
Open forest usually near some water
source
|
|
Plumage
|
Wide variation between the eastern
birds and the western birds. The
male and the female have the same plumage.
.
|
|
Distribution
|
Eastern states and the Pacific
coast
|
|
Breeding
|
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
The courtship procedure is a lot more
intricate and dramatic than the actual mating as this
account demonstrates.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
On March 24, 1930, while crossing a
back-lying mowing between two plots of woodland, a
red-shouldered hawk was seen to come from the west and begin
to mount higher by spiraling, until it had gained an
altitude of about 1,000 feet, screaming the common kee-you,
kee-you note every little while, usually on the outer swoop
for the next vault in the rise. At the zenith of its flight
the calls were loudest, two-syllabled screams.
Just at this time another hawk, the
female, came from the west, crossed 50 feet overhead, and
alighted in a bare oak 200 yards away at the edge of the
woodland. The male had evidently been watching the female's
approach, as, several moments before I knew of her presence,
he began shooting downward with swift lunges for several
hundred feet at once, checking the rush and sweeping a wide
spiral before again dropping down. No sooner had the female
alighted than the male, from a height of at least 200 feet,
made a last rapid drop that landed him on the female's back.
Just the second before this contact she had spread her wings
and crouched down close to the branch and crosswise of it.
Copulation was immediate, occupying about 60 seconds. Then
the male hopped along the branch and they sat facing
opposite directions, immovable, a foot or so apart, for 10
minutes. At the end of this period, the male launched forth
and flew back toward the west, where he proceeded to climb
beyond the range of the naked eye. Soon after he left the
oak, the female followed, but did not go near his
location.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Wide variety of vertebrates and
invertebrates. See below.
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
|
|
Habitat
|
Open fields, plains,
wetlands
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout most of the US; except
southeastern states
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is a platform of sticks placed in
the middle of a coniferous tree. Quite often the nest is
used a number of years.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
One of the reasons that the US
government wanted A. C. Bent to gather the life histories of
the birds was to determine which species were beneficial and
which were not beneficial. Being beneficial usually meant
that they ate harmful rodents and insects, or at least did
not eat animals raised by farmers.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Food: As before remarked, the
rough-legged hawk is highly beneficial to man in its feeding
habits, as it preys on harmful rodents and insects. Seldom
or never does it take birds. Dr. A. K. Fisher (1893) gives a
table showing the results of examinations of 49 stomachs of
this bird. Forty contained mice: nearly all meadow mice: and
two contained rabbits, one a gopher and one a weasel. One
contained a lizard and 70 insects, and four were empty.
Junius Henderson (1927) quotes various observers and their
stomach examinations and finds no record of bird remains.
Field mice, so destructive to young orchards, were by far
the most abundant. In one case the stomach was "filled with
grasshoppers", and the latter pests are eagerly devoured by
this hawk. In the North, lemmings constitute the chief of
its diet.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Mammals
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
|
|
Habitat
|
Plains, prairie
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Western states
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is a platform of sticks placed in
the middle of a coniferous tree. Quite often the nest is
used a number of years.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
phase - In some species, especially
hawks, there are color variations within the species.
Red-tailed Hawks especially have light phases, regular
phases and dark phases. But unlike the usual use of the word
phase, the individual birds will not grow out of their
phase. If they are born as a dark phase they will spend
their life as a dark phase bird.
melanistic - a very dark morph bird is
called melanistic.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Mr. Cameron (1914) says that. the
young bird requires four or five years to attain its fully
adult plumage, but I should say that at the end of the
second year the young bird molts into a plumage that is
practically adult, although from then on the under parts
continue to become more extensively white, nearly immaculate
in the oldest birds, except for the brown tibiae and barred
flanks; the tail becomes progressively whiter and finally
pure white, except for faint gray or tawny clouding on the
outer webs; and the upper parts become paler, with more
white in very old birds.
The above descriptions apply to birds
in the light phase. Dark phase birds are not especially rare
and are often found mated with light phase birds. Nearly
half of the birds we saw in Saskatchewan were in melanistic
plumage. Two young birds were taken from a nest and reared
in captivity, one of which developed into a melanistic bird
and one into the light phase. A brood of four young, taken
from a nest in North Dakota in 1902 by Dr. Louis B. Bishop,
developed into four dark juvenals.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Lizards, birds, insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
|
|
Habitat
|
Wooded areas generally near
desert
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have the same plumage.
juvenile is brownish while
adult is gray.
|
|
Distribution
|
The southern most parts of Arizona and
New Mexico; can also be found in the southern tip of Texas.
|
|
Breeding
|
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
The Gray Hawk is listed as the Mexican
Goshawk in Bent.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
One of the greatest delights of my
days spent in the mesquite forest near Tucson, Ariz., was
the frequent glimpses we had of this beautiful little hawk
sailing gracefully over the treetops. Its mantle of pearly
gray and its breast finely barred with gray and white were
well contrasted with a tail boldly banded with black and
white. The exquisite combination of soft grays, black, and
white made it, to my mind, one of the prettiest hawks I had
ever seen.
The mesquite forest, where these hawks
were quite common. was on the banks of the Santa Cruz River
and is more fully described under the preceding species.
Major
Bendire (1892) also found them
common in "the timber in the Rillitto Creek bottom near
Tucson" and says that Otho C. Poling found them "in a deep
wooded canyon" in the Huachuca Mountains, where he was
camped "among some thick spruce and sycamore
woods."
He says further: "It seems to be found
only in the vicinity of water courses, and not, like many of
the other Raptores, on the dry and comparatively barren
desert-like .
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
A wide variety of vertebrates.
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
|
|
Habitat
|
Prairie
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
Has a light and dark morph.
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Distribution
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Spends winter in South America, breeds
throughout the west. Famous for having very large migrating
flocks coming up from South America as they return toNorth
America to breed. These large flocks are sometimes called
"kettles".
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Breeding
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Nest is a platform of sticks placed in
the middle of a coniferous tree. Quite often the nest is
used a number of years.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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In the account below Cameron is
referring to Swainson's Hawks but uses the colloguial term,
buzzard, which represents, for many people, any large hawk
or vulture.
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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E. S. Cameron (1907) gives the
following account of a remarkable flight observed in
Montana:
My first introduction to these hawks
was in April, 1890, when an extraordinary invasion of them:
probably nearly two thousand birds: alighted around the
ranch where I was staying on the west bank of the Powder
River. They came in the afternoon from a southerly direction
and, for a time at least, followed the downward course of
the river, as a neighbor living above reported the enormous
hawk army which flew over. The wide river bottom where the
ranch is situated is thickly overgrown with cottonwoods, and
the fence of the saddle horse pasture all but joins the
buildings. When the last birds had arrived, the trees inside
this pasture were simply black with them; but as there
appeared to be numbers beyond, I saddled my horse in order
to reconnoitre further. * * Having ridden round the fence I
found that not only were the trees filled with clusters of
buzzards, but that the ground below was covered with them
sitting in rows among the cattle, the sight surpassing
anything I had hitherto seen in bird life. All were
obviously worn out and appeared asleep; but those on the
ground, if closely approached, were not too tired to fly up
and join their comrades in the trees. .. I gave the
estimated number of buzzards at about a thousand; but it
became obvious afterwards that two thousand would have been
nearer the true count, as twenty trees each containing fifty
birds give a total of a thousand without including all those
on the ground and in more distant cottonwoods.
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Name
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Food
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Small mammals, amphibians, reptiles,
birds
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Feeding
Techniques
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Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey.
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Habitat
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Wooded areas
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
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Distribution
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Eastern states
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Breeding
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Nest built by both sexes placed midway
in large tree.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Mr. Shelley has sent me the following
interesting notes on one of its spectacular flight
maneuvers:
The soaring of the broad-winged hawk,
in 1926, was watched on several occasions. A family group of
six birds had been noted about a densely wooded tract and a
hill known as Smith's Hill, where I often observed adults
earlier in the year as they crossed over its rocky summit to
hunt over the lower valleys to the west. Little time was
available to spend with them, but with the young fledged and
on the wing, their hunting excursion as a family unit was
always a spectacular sight. A still more pleasing exhibition
was when, toward the period of the fall migration, they met
in what I considered a spirit of play. In this performance
they resembled more than anything a batch of dry leaves
lifted and tossed and whirled on a zephyr of brisk autumn
wind. A low call would be given, believed to be from an
adult, whereupon the birds if separated would congregate at
the spot where the first bird wheeled and sailed and called
some 200 feet in the air. Then, with the family together,
more calls could be heard, growing fainter as the birds rose
in their display. Slowly at first, but gradually gaining
momentum, the six birds on set pinions soared in and out
among each other, round and round in a radius not greater
than a quarter mile, lifting and ducking, volpianing and
diving steeply toward earth at varying angles, constantly
rising, nevertheless, into the clear blue sky. As height was
gained and maintained, the dives and sails became swifter,
in the forms of arcs and a series of dips and rises; a lower
bird rising above them all, only to side-skip, arc, dive,
and rise again, another repeating the maneuver then another,
and another. As leaves on the wind current, there seemed no
advantageous goal to their actions, except to rise, slowly
at first and then with the gain of altitude, swiftly, up,
up, and finally, lost to sight. Then in from 5 to 20 minutes
they reappeared as tiny dots, by the aid of binoculars, as
they shot down plummetwise, banked, regained altitude, but
slowly lowering, in spectacular sweeps through the air,
growing clearer until the entire physique could be made out,
and, finally, on set wings, a sail that would take them to
the summit of Smith's Hill and the dark wilderness fastness
of the Fuller Wood beyond.
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Name
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Food
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Small mammals, birds,
lizards
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Feeding
Techniques
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Looks for food while on the wing,
dives down to right above the prey and then drops on the
prey and grabs it with its talons. Hunting technique varies
with the prey. See below
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Habitat
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Desert
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
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Distribution
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