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White-tailed Kite
Elanus leucurus
10.0685, -84.5164
Field Notes
Description:
It was big and beautiful, it sat in the tree, after a while it flew to meet it's mate in the tree far away from where I was, I could see the two white tiny specs, on the top of the tree.
Their coloration is gull-like, but their shape and flight falcon-like, with a rounded tail. Mainly white underneath, they have black wingtips and shoulders. A mid-sized kite, it measures 35–43 cm (14–17 in) in length, spans 88–102 cm (35–40 in) across the wings and weighs 250–380 g (8.8–13 oz). Both the wings, at 29–32.8 cm (11–12.9 in) each, and the tail, at 15.1–18.6 cm (5.9–7.3 in), are relatively elongated. The tarsus measures around 3.6 cm (1.4 in).
Notes:
The White-tailed Kite was rendered almost extinct in California in the 1930s and 1940s by shooting and egg-collecting, but they are now common again. Their distribution is patchy, however – they can be seen in the Central Valley and southern coastal areas, open land around Goleta including the Ellwood Mesa Open Space, marshes in Humboldt County, and also around the San Francisco Bay, but elsewhere they are still rare or absent. They are also found in southern Texas, on the Baja California peninsula, and in eastern Mexico, and on a global scale they are not considered threatened species by the IUCN. On rare occasions the bird can be found far afield. At different times, two had been sighted in New England as of 2010.
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