Mississippi Kite

COMMON NAME: Mississippi Kite

SCIENTIFIC NAME: Lobelia mississippiensis

IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS
The Mississippi kite is a beautiful, falcon-like bird whose body is an overall gray color and whose head is a lighter ashy gray. It has a completely black tail, deep red eyes, and yellow to red legs. In flight, this bird is smooth, graceful, and buoyant. Mississippi kites are very social in all activities, and do not maintain territories.

RANGE
Mississippi kites are highly migratory. They winter in central South America, but may occur casually as far north as southern Texas. In the spring, they often migrate in groups of 20 to 30 to their nesting sites in Arizona, east to southeastern Colorado, southern Kansas, southern Missouri, and the southeastern states.

HABITAT
Tall trees near water in open woodlands, savannahs, and rangelands are preferred nesting sites. Mississippi kites have also been known to build nests in urban settings.

NESTING
Paired kites generally begin nesting soon after their arrival in their old nests or in newly constructed ones. Kites breed in late May or early June. Both sexes will usually incubate two bluish-white eggs until they hatch 31 to 32 days later. Like many birds, kites will dive at animals and people that venture too closely to their nests. This diving behavior is simply an attempt to ward off potential threats to the nest and young. Once the young leave the nest some 30 to 34 days after hatching, kites stop their protective behavior. Kites normally may live to seven years of age in the wild.

FEEDING HABITS
Kites are primarily insect eaters, with a preference for grasshoppers, cicadas, dragonflies, and other insects that they will, at times, catch in flight and consume in midair. Kites have been known to fly about cattle and horsemen in order to catch insects that are stirred up from the grass. They sometimes will feed on small snakes, lizards, frogs, and small birds.

Information obtained from Texas Parks and Wildlife