Hook-billed Kite

About the Hook-billed Kite

A stocky, oddly proportioned raptor of the subtropics, the Hook-billed Kite is best known for its heavy, deeply hooked bill - a specialized tool for a specialized diet. Plumage is variable, gray or brown with barred underparts and staring pale eyes, and in flight it shows broad, paddle-shaped wings.

That outsized bill is built to extract tree snails from their shells, the kite's main food, and piles of empty snail shells beneath a favored perch are a classic sign of one nearby. It works slowly through dense woodland rather than soaring in the open.

In Texas the Hook-billed Kite is a rare and prized resident of the subtropical woodlands along the Rio Grande in the Lower Valley, one of the specialties that draws birders to South Texas.

A note from behind the lens: this is a patience-and-local-knowledge bird of dense Valley forest. Learn where a pair works its snail-rich woods, watch for a bird perched in the mid-canopy, and be ready in the soft, filtered light for a look at that remarkable bill.