Black Shouldered Kite

Description:

The Black-shouldered Kite (Elanus axillaris) or Australian Black-shouldered Kite is a small raptor found in open habitat throughout Australia and resembles similar species found in Africa, Eurasia and North America, which have in the past also been named as Black-shouldered Kites. Measuring 35–38 cm (13.8–15 in) in length with a wingspan of 80–95 cm (31.5–37.4 in), the adult Black-shouldered Kite is a small and graceful, predominantly pale grey and white, raptor with black shoulders and red eyes. Their primary call is a clear whistle, uttered in flight and while hovering. Though reported across Australia, they are most common in the south-east and south-west corners of the mainland. Their preferred habitat is open grasslands with scattered trees and they are often seen hunting along roadsides. Like all the elanid kites, it is a specialist predator of rodents, which it hunts singly or in pairs by hovering in mid-air above open land.Black-shouldered Kites form monogamous pairs, breeding between August and January. The birds engage in aerial courtship displays which involve high circling flight and ritualised feeding mid-air. Three or four eggs are laid and incubated for around thirty days. Chicks are fully fledged within five weeks of hatching and can hunt for mice within a week of leaving the nest. Juveniles disperse widely from the home territory.Black-shouldered Kites are around 35 to 38 cm in length (13.8 to 15 in) and have a wingspan of between 80 and 95 cm (31.5 to 37.4 in) and an average weight of 291 grams (10.26 oz). Adults are a very pale grey with a white head and white underparts. The leading edge of the inner wing is black. When perched, this gives them their prominent black "shoulders". They have red eyes, with a black 'comma' that extends behind the eyes. They have a squared tail and a streamlined aerodynamic body. The bill is short with a sharp, hooked tip to the upper mandible. Their nostrils and the cere (skin at the base of the bill) are bright yellow and the bill is black. The legs and feet are also yellow, and the feet have three toes facing forwards and one toe facing backwards. The sexes are similar, with females only just larger than males, although they can be up to 15% heavier.The juveniles’ markings follow a similar pattern to adult birds, but they are washed with a rusty brown on the head and upper breast, and the back and wings are mottled buff or brown with prominent white tips. The young birds’ eyes are brown.The Black-shouldered Kite is very similar to the related raptor species, the Letter-winged Kite (E. scriptus) but has the black mark above and behind the eye, a white rather than grey crown, and shows all-white underparts in flight except for the black patch at the shoulder and dark wingtips.Black-shouldered Kites are generally silent, except in the breeding season when their calls, though weak, can be persistent.They primarily utter clear whistled 'chee, chee, chee' calls in flight and while hovering, or a hoarse wheezing 'skree-ah' when perched. The call has been confused with that of a Silver Gull. A short high whistle is the primary contact call between a pair, while a harsh scraping call is the most common call used by females and large young, and brooding females call to their young with a deep, soft, frog-like croak.A variety of different calls have been recorded from captive birds, including harsh, harmonic, chatter and whistle vocalisations.Harsh calls were made when a bird was alarmed or agitated, whistle-type calls were emitted in general contexts, sometimes monotonously, and shorter duration 'chatter' calls were given when a bird sighted a human near the enclosure.Black-shouldered Kites live almost exclusively on mice, and have become a specialist predator of house mice, often following outbreaks of mouse plagues in rural areas. They take other suitably sized creatures when available, including grasshoppers, rats, small reptiles, birds, and even (very rarely) rabbits, but mice and other mouse-sized mammals account for over 90% of their diet. Their influence on mouse populations is probably significant: adults take two or three mice a day each if they can, around a thousand mice a year.When a mouse or other prey is spotted, the kite drops silently onto it, feet-first with wings raised high; sometimes in one long drop to ground level, more often in two or more stages, with hovering pauses at intermediate heights. Prey is seized in the talons and about 75% of attacks are successful.Prey can either be eaten in flight or carried back to a perch. Birds will have a favoured feeding perch, beneath which accumulate piles of pellets or castings.They are diurnal, preferring to hunt during the day, particularly in the early morning and mid to late afternoon, and will occasionally hunt in pairs. Their hunting patterns, outside breeding periods and periods of abundant prey, have distinct crepuscular peaks, perhaps corresponding to mouse activity.Black-shouldered Kites spiral into the wind like a Kestrel. They soar with v-shaped up-curved wings, the primaries slightly spread and the tail widely fanned. In level flight progress is rather indirect. Their flight pattern has been described as 'winnowing' with soft steady beats interspersed with long glides on angled wings. They can most often be seen hovering with wings curved and tail pointing down.

Habitat:

Black-shouldered Kites form monogamous pairs. The breeding season is usually August to January, but is responsive to mice populations, and some pairs breed twice in a good season.Both sexes are involved in building the nest, which is a large untidy shallow cup of sticks usually in the foliage near the top of trees, taking about two weeks to complete the nest-building. The flat nest is built of thin twigs and is around 28 to 38 cm (11 to 15 in) across when newly built, but growing to around 78 cm (30.7 in) across and 58 cm (22.8 in) deep after repeated use. The nest is lined with green leaves and felted fur, though linings of grass and cow dung have also been reported. It is generally located in the canopy of an isolated or exposed tree in open country, elevated 5 to 20 m (15–60 ft) or more above the ground. Black-shouldered Kites have been known to use old Australian Magpie, crow or raven nests.Females perform most of the care of eggs and nestlings, though males take a minor share of incubation and brooding.The clutch consists of three to four dull white eggs of a tapered oval shape measuring 42 x 31 mm and with red-brown blotches that are often heavier around the larger end of the egg. The female incubates the eggs for 30 days and when the eggs hatch the chicks are helpless but have soft down covering their body. For the first two weeks or so the female broods the chicks constantly, both day and night. The female does no hunting at all for the first three weeks after hatching, but calls to the male from the nest, and he generally responds by bringing food.

Notes:

This beautiful bird was perched quite far from us when we were exploring the Kudremukh area for birding and trekking. I could spot some movement on the tip of this tree, when I looked through the binoculars, it was this majestic bird on the tip of the dry tree and it was indeed a good identification from this area. We went slightly closer camouflaging ourselves on the high grass, hence we could get this pose of the Black Shouldered Kite.