![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When it gets hot and dry the snails burrow under the mats to conserve moisture. The snails need natural areas with prickly-pear, yucca, or other plants that drop enough leaves, pads, and vegetation to form thick mats on the forest floor. There aren't many places that have enough snails to support a nesting pair of Hook-billed Kites. The unique nesting habitat needs of the Hook-billed Kite includes stumps, snags, or fence posts to use as food perches, LOTS of accessible Rabdotus land snails for food, and tall trees to hold a nest. There were no territorial pairs in Cameron County where they are rare, and there were only infrequent observations in Starr County. In South Texas there are very few birds, with 4 pair known in Hidalgo County this spring (2011). So just how rare are Hook-billed Kites? While they are widespread in the New World, extending well into South America, they are at their northern limits in South Texas. They likely move the chick closer to the feeding area if it's not depleted, or to new areas if it is. The birds vanished last year as soon as the chick fledged. The extent of the barring means it's a female, the males are much less barred as juveniles. Here's the chick on June 18 - it's extensively barred on the underparts and already has the rufous collar across the back of the neck. Probably better I don't know what names she's calling me. I think she's starting to recognize me as an individual. The female was perched by the road on the way out, and she allowed me to walk right by her - but not without some comments. After I peeked quickly at the chick - getting bigger, doing just fine - I headed straight out. I think it's the light eye and the large head, but it is exascerbated when the bird is looking for a snail or cocking its head. Hook-billed Kites often remind me of a parrot when perched, something like an African Gray. The female appeared behind me as soon as I got to the area. I wasn't so lucky trying to skulk into the nest to check on the chick a few days later. We've been getting a lot of strong winds this summer. ![]() Here's the female Hook-billed Kite crabbing into a very strong headwind, and compensating for the wind by using her tail as a rudder. The male seems to feed the chick more than the female in the late afternoon. I've never found a nest in incubation or with a small chick. The male makes many fewer trips to feed the chick than the female, at least in the second half of the nestling period. This unusual plumage allows this bird to be identified as an individual, especially with the very small number of Hook-billed Kites in Texas. The male Hook-billed Kite of this pair is a gray (normal) morph (as opposed to the rare black morph) but this individual is nearly lacking the white barring on the breast of a typical male. Here's the male, below, making a snail run - I'm not near the nest here, he's just flying overhead. The nest is in a mesquite, and if anything it is higher than the nest we found last year (see posts from June and July 2010). Instead of entertaining birders and photographers, they should be feeding their chick - no easy task in the current "exceptional" drought. I worry about the kites being "loved to death" - they are very defensive of the area around their nest, and will follow people around if they find them too close to the nest. The nest was actually visible from a road if you knew just where to look. I found the nest, snapped this photo, and got out without the adults knowing I was present. Here's the chick in the nest, as found on June 5, 2011. We were all around the nest but we didn't find it, though many of us gave blood to the thorn forest understory. A crack crew assembled to look for the nest on June 3. It's funny just how many people jump at the chance to burrow their way through thorny, dusty, tick and chigger-filled thorn forest to look for a Hook-billed Kite nest. But this female was carrying snails off to the north, and returning without a snail. If they don't have chicks, they take the snail to a nearby stump or fence post, extract the snail, and grab another. While small, whitish land snails in the genus Rabdotus are the common diet for the species, the kites don't usually carry them long distances unless they have a chick they are feeding in the nest. The photo above is of the red-barred female. My first observations of Hook-billed Kites this summer were of the adults carrying snails on May 29, 2011. I actually go out looking for them in the summer, and I'm always surprised when I do find one. I live near the epicenter of Hook-billed Kites in the USA in western Hidalgo County, Texas. The location: Private property near La Joya, Texas. ![]()
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