| Kites scout the
Piney Woods all year round By Jay V. Huner Journal Correspondent |
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Scan the skies as you approach Bossier City for the Louisiana Forestry Association’s Annual Convention in August. Look for medium-sized, graceful “hawks” moving like a child’s kite, swooping up and down or rocking back and forth at a constant height in the wind. Chances are pretty good you will see such a bird which will almost surely be a Mississippi Kite. Aptly named, these striking raptors (hawk-like birds) do resemble the bird-shaped kites that children fly in strong spring winds. Mississippi Kites are the most common of the Gulf South’s three kites including Mississippi, Swallow-tailed, and White tailed Kites. They favor urban and suburban areas in flood plains for their nesting sites, perhaps because major predator, larger hawks and Great Horned Owls, avoid such areas. These striking birds sometimes nest communally so good numbers may be in the air simultaneously, especially by mid-late summer when the fledglings join their parents tocatch large flying insects. Prey includes cicadas, dragonflies, and grasshoppers with the birds often holding their meals in one talon while eating on the wing. Other less common prey includes lizards, frogs, small birds, and rodents. When food is scarce, Mississippi Kites are reported to dine on road kill like turtles. If the old timers insist that Mississippi Kites are “chicken hawks”, they are mistaken. The only reason why a Mississippi Kite would make a pass around a chicken yard would be to catch large insects not to take off with a chicken. Adults return to the piney woods region in mid-spring from their wintering grounds in southern South America. These kites can handle such long flights quite easily. They have a wing span of three feet to take full advantage of air currents to rise high in the sky on thermals and glide long distances with no expenditure of energy. Great numbers gather from the central and southern USA in early-mid fall to return to South America. So, what do Mississippi Kites actually look like? According to the late Dr. George H. Lowery, Jr., “...The adult is readily identified by the sharp contrast of it slate-colored upperparts, black-tipped wings, black tail, and pearl gray head and breast....” There is a whitish steak along the back side of the wings that is visible when the birds are swooping about. Immature Mississippi Kites have an overall brownish color with heavy streaking below and a few indistinct bands across their dark tails. Swallow-tailed Kites have long, forked tails, whitish bodies and black trailing edges on their wings. If you see one, you will never forget the bird. They are uncommon to rare and favor swampy areas including the Pearl River, Atchafalaya River, Calcasieu River and Sabine River areas within a hundred miles or so of the Gulf of Mexico. White-tailed Kites have the same silhouette as the Mississippi Kite but have white tails and are very rare in the piney woods. They are birds of the southwest and west with a limited presence in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. If you should see a kite hovering on rapidly beating wings over an open landscape, you can bet it is a White-tailed Kite. Jay V. Huner |
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