You may be surprised to find them in cities, like the subspecies in India that are adapted to urban living. They favor wetlands, river edges, coasts, grassland, open plains, shrubland, and woodlands. You can find Black Kites in many different types of habitats considering how widespread they are in the world. It has been seen in Alaska, which makes it a vagrant to North America. Its current population stands at 6 Million, spanning four continents – Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. European and Central Asian birds are migratory while Indian and Australasian birds are resident. Their legs are yellow and their talons are black.īlack Kites currently have 5 subspecies – European Black Kite, Black-eared Kite, Small Indian Kite, Fork-Tailed Kite, and the Taiwan Kite. Their tails are short, forked, and with darker-brown barring.
#Black and white kite Patch#
Their outer wings are black with a large pale patch at their base. Their underparts are dark-brown, sometimes with some rufous (red) mixed in. They have a dark patch behind the eye, a yellow cere (skin connecting the bill to the forehead), and a black bill (which differentiates them from the yellow-billed kite). Their heads and necks are a bit on the lighter side, with some having grayish-brown streaks. It’s a pity that the bird will never know how admired it was, that Sunday morning, when it was probably just concerned about its next Sunday meal, most likely a rodent.The Black Kite is a medium- to large-sized, widely distributed bird of prey.īlack Kites are generally dark brown in coloring. The Black-shouldered kite was back on the perch with a rodent and had started devouring it. Happily, this sleek handsome bird is found all over the country and, in fact, its habitat has been expanding as it enters areas that have been heavily deforested.
In India, especially in the rural and agricultural belts, experts call this bird a Pied-Piper of Hamelin, as it has a gargantuan taste for rodent flesh.īlack-shoulder kite hovering (Courtsey: Osa Conservation) It hovers above her prey, scanning and analyzing the need for speed, before she swoops in for her favourite meal – rodents. When it comes to hunting, Black-shouldered kite is a hover-and-attack sort of bird. “It is hunting time – morning and evening, be ready”, our guide alerted us pointing towards the hovering bird. It was a sight to behold to watch her soar high. We waited for her to fly, her long wings spread out impressively as she took off. Maybe it is a form of display, but also when excited. When perched, black-shouldered kite raises and lowers the tail very often. And her tail-feathers look like hand-crafted Japanese fans. That is why she seems fashionable all the time. Her grey-and-white plumage wears a fresh coat of paint every other season. With sharp crimson eyes inside black frames, she thirsts for bloody sunsets. The black-shoulder kite looks like a character out of an animated film. In Hindi, It is known as Kapas because of its white colour. It may not be as big and powerful like eagles and falcons but it holds its own, and is very proficient at what it does. The black-shouldered kite also known as the black-winged kite is slightly smaller than a crow and is one of the smaller members of raptors. Though we were after the big raptors, this handsome bird stopped us in our tracks. Unlike other raptors which are big, dark and powerful birds with gimlet eyes, armed with grappling iron talons and cruel meat-hook bills, this bird was refined, silver-grey and snow-white, looking straight down out of eyes that seem to be made of pure rubies.
That Sunday morning in Tal Chhapar Black Buck sanctuary in Rajasthan, we halted the jeep and watched the bird perching quietly at our eye level. Tail feathers of the black-shouldered kite look like a Japanese fan (All photos: Mrityunjoy Kumar Jha)
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