Mississippi kites glide through Houston skies during migration
Story by Gary Clark, Correspondent • Thursday
1 of 4 Photos in Gallery© Kathy Adams Clark, Kathy Adams Clark/KAC Productions
Mississippi kites glide through Houston skies during migration
Swallow-tailed kites will sail over local neighborhoods in the coming weeks on their migratory journey to South American wintering grounds.
Swallow-tailed and Mississippi kites will sail over local neighborhoods in the next few weeks on their migratory journey to their South American wintering grounds.
They glide, turn and twist through the air. Their kite moniker originates from the Old English word "cytai," first used to describe the screaming call of hawks.
But as people watched paper toys called kites swaying in the air while held aloft by a string, they called similar flying birds "kites."
Swallow-tailed kites glide through the sky on a 4-foot, two-toned wingspan, with their leading edges white and the trailing edges black. The birds merely torque their wings to guide their elegantly swaying flight with wingbeats at a minimum.
A 12- to 15-inch long, bifurcated black tail swivels like a rudder to maneuver the birds as they swoop up and down while gliding over treetops, their talons extending to pluck up cicadas, grasshoppers, wasps, dragonflies and other insects.
They’ll fly just above the surface of a pond and scoop up water in their beaks. Nesting birds swoop low over the ground to snatch snakes, frogs and lizards to nourish their chicks.
Near Houston, the birds follow a migratory path along a broad swath of East Texas bottomland habitat with open forests, freshwater marshes and agricultural fields. The U.S. 90 corridor between Liberty and Dayton is an excellent place to watch for them.
In recent years, Mississippi kites have begun nesting in local tree-lined neighborhoods, and many of us have seen them soaring overhead. The birds have trim, 15-inch-long slate-gray bodies and fly on straight 3-foot wingspans.
We may not notice the birds wheeling high in the air with their pewter bodies backlighted on bright summer days. Keep looking, because once sunlight illuminates their topsides tilted in flight, you’ll see their pearly-white heads, white wing patches and black tails.
Birds breeding in the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, Kansas and the southern U.S. will join our local breeding birds on their southbound migration. They’ll swoop low over treetops, snatching up insects, grabbing dragonflies in midair, and skimming meadows, yards and golf courses to loot frogs, toads, lizards and snakes.
Large flocks numbering in the hundreds may circle over your wooded neighborhood in the late afternoon and suddenly spiral down into the trees to roost at sundown.
Mississippi kites glide through Houston skies during migration (msn.com) |
