White-tailed Kite

About the White-tailed Kite

The White-tailed Kite is the ghost of the grasslands - a slim, elegant, gull-white raptor with pale gray upperparts, black shoulder patches, and red eyes, hunting over open fields with a light, buoyant flight. Its trademark is the hover: it hangs motionless in the wind on beating wings, sometimes for a minute at a time, then parachutes straight down on a vole.

Kites hunt mostly at dawn and dusk over grassland, marsh edge, and farmland, and roost communally in winter, sometimes by the dozens. They were shot nearly to extinction in the early 1900s and have recovered dramatically, spreading back across Texas and up the coast.

In Texas the White-tailed Kite is a year-round bird of the coastal prairies and the Rio Grande Valley and a spreading breeder in Central Texas, and a hovering white kite over a Valley field is one of the most graceful sights in Texas birding.