![]() The long falcon-like wings extend beyond the tail when the bird is perched. This long-winged raptor is predominantly grey or white with black shoulder patches, wing tips and eye stripe. caeruleus hovering with whitish underside of the secondaries visible. hypoleucus Gould, 1859 – Greater and Lesser Sunda Islands, the Philippines, Sulawesi and New GuineaĮ. The underwing secondaries are smoky grey and nearly white in the nominate subspecies. vociferus ( Latham, 1790) – Pakistan to east China, Malay Peninsula and Indochina. caeruleus ( Desfontaines, 1789) – southwest Iberian Peninsula, Africa, southwest Arabia The specific epithet caeruleus is the Latin for "blue". The word Elanus is from Ancient Greek elanos for a "kite". The claw lacks a groove on the underside. The genus Elanus is distinctive in having very small scales covering the foot and on the underside, scutellate scales are found only under the terminal phalanges. It is now one of four species in the genus Elanus which was introduced in 1809 by the French zoologist Jules-César Savigny. The black-winged kite was described by the French naturalist René Louiche Desfontaines in 1789 and given the binomial name Falco caeruleus. Populations in southern Europe have grown in response to human activities, particularly agriculture and livestock rearing.Ĭomparison of skull of Elanus with Falco (right) They are well adapted to utilize periodic upsurges in rodent populations and can raise multiple broods in a single year unlike most birds of prey. They are not migratory, but show nomadism in response to weather and food availability. Although mainly seen on plains, they are sometimes seen on grassy slopes of hills in the higher elevation regions of Asia. The owl-like behaviour is even more pronounced in the letter-winged kite ( Elanus scriptus), a nocturnal relative in Australia. This kite is distinctive, with long wings white, grey and black plumage and owl-like forward-facing eyes with red irises. This Palearctic and Afrotropical species was sometimes combined with the Australian black-shouldered kite ( Elanus axillaris) and the white-tailed kite ( Elanus leucurus) of North and South America which together form a superspecies. The black-winged kite ( Elanus caeruleus), also known as the black-shouldered kite (not to be confused with the closely-related Australian species of the same name), is a small diurnal bird of prey in the family Accipitridae best known for its habit of hovering over open grasslands in the manner of the much smaller kestrels. ![]()
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