Wildlife Spotlight | Swallow-tailed Kites
This highly migratory raptor graces portions of Texas with their presence every spring and summer.
The first time I saw a swallow-tailed kite, Elanoides forficatus, I was living in Florida with my husband Chris. He had moved there in early 2002 to attend Florida Tech for grad school and I followed him in June 2002 after I graduated college and we’d gotten married. It didn’t take us too long to start exploring Florida and learning our bearings in a new state. New plants, new animals, new terrain—it was exciting and full of adventure!
I’m not sure of the exact moment when I saw my first swallow-tailed kite, though. As with many things, we’ve often “seen” something long before we’ve truly known it and understood it. There’s a term called Plant Blindness, which posits that people generally only see a wall of green, a mere backdrop to the landscape without understanding how plants work and function in the ecosystem as a whole. I tend to think we have Ecology Blindness because our blatant disregard for the natural world can been seen as we continue to build and build, without repercussions. Well, I guess technically those repercussions are coming…we’re just getting started with that impending global ecological change.
But birds are another part of that blindness. We hear birdsong but can we distinguish which species is making which call, much less the variations in calls? I know I certainly can’t. Birding is one subject area I haven’t spent a lot of time in, and when I do get interested in it, I tend to favor the larger species, such as the raptors.
Swallow-tailed kites are a highly migratory species, leaving South America for the northern hemisphere in early spring, February-March, where they breed and nest from deep east Texas across to Florida. Their range in Texas used to be more extensive but loss of habitat and climate change has affected their distribution. The destruction of bottomland habitat along riverine and marsh systems has been detrimental to the swallow-tailed kite’s overall range here in the state and elsewhere, and while Florida is continually being swallowed up by concrete it still has extensive wetland ecosystems which allow it to serve as an epicenter for the species in the US—for now at least.
Imagine undertaking a 5,000 mile migration every year, soaring above the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, or bouncing from island to island in the Caribbean before finally making it to land, where you drop down to the nearest place to safely perch and rest, and then begin the search for food. It’s a trek that many migratory bird species make every year, many traveling much further distances.
We’ve been lucky over the years to see swallow-tailed kites fly around the pond we live on, swooping down to get a sip of water or snatch an insect from the air. I thought I had some photos from here at our house but I’m not finding them—they must be stuck on a hard drive or I just never had my camera out in the moments they were flying by.
This year I saw my first pair of swallow-tailed kites soaring above a road as I went to a doctor’s appointment sometime in April. They were easy to identify once I saw their soaring pattern and tell-tale tail, and I kept one eye on the road and the other on them as they soared above my car, before passing out of view. And then I saw no more until a weekend ago when Chris and I saw another pair circling above SH 99/Grand Parkway near the San Jacinto River floodplain. It’s like that here in SE Texas, you may see several for a few weeks and then none at all for a couple of months and then they will appear again. And it’s a delight every time I see them in the sky, no matter how many times I’ve seen one.
In late summer, the kites depart North America and return to the winter homes in South America, where they will feed and roost and live in the tropical forests there until it is time to initiate the cycle once again.
If you find yourself in southeast Texas, keep your eyes on the sky from March-August, especially over wetlands and bottomland habitats. The birds are very distinctive and easy to identify by their tails. And count yourself lucky if you get to see one, as shifting migration patterns are likely for this species and there’s a very good chance Texas may become even more of a fringe range for them during spring and summer in the future.
Further Reading:
+Audubon swallow-tailed kite information
Ooops I missed your Ecology blindness comment. In the first read. 🤷🏻♀️
Great post. However I would go one step further in the blindness…nature blindness. 😟