Mississippi Kite

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Mississippi Kite

Mississippi Kite, USFWS Photo

Conservation status

Least Concern

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Falconiformes
Family:	Accipitridae
Genus:	Ictinia
Species:	I. mississippiensis

Binomial name

Ictinia mississippiensis
(Wilson, 1811)

The Mississippi Kite, Ictinia mississippiensis, is a small/medium-sized, sleek raptor in the family Accipitridae. It is primarily light to dark gray and black. It is long-winged, acrobatic and graceful in flight, can soar for long periods, and may stoop vertically at high speed for prey.

Mississippi Kites breed in the southeastern United States north in various densities to northern Virginia, western Tennessee, southern Indiana and Illinois, southeast and east-central Missouri, and more densely in much of the south half of central and western Kansas and much of central and western Oklahoma and Texas. They occur in a few scattered locations in Nebraska and northeast Colorado, and are common in much of southeast Colorado. They are also common in east-central New Mexico, and are found in a few other scattered locations in New Mexico and Arizona. They are known to nest outside the United States only rarely in northern Mexico, and migrate, sometimes in huge flocks, to parts of South America. Mississippi Kites usually lay two eggs, occasionally only one, and very, very rarely three in a stick nest in a great variety of deciduous trees from 6 to 100+ feet, usually 20 - 60 depending on tree size and species. In the past 75 years they have undergone changes in nesting habitat from use of broken and continuous forest, gallery forest, and savanna, to include shelterbelts and other small man-created tree groups of various sizes. They are now very common nesters in urban areas of all sizes in the western states and some south-central states.

Mississippi Kites flock, nest singly or in colonies of various densities and sizes, are very gregarious, and non-territorial.

Their diet consists of large quantities of insects and considerable numbers (at least in many areas) of small mammals, birds, snakes, lizards, and frogs. They will scavenge road kills. Mississippi Kites, especially nestlings and adults on nests, are often killed and eaten at night by other large vertebrate carnivores such as raccoons and Great Horned Owls. They are very aggressive to these threats during the day. Probably because they are aggressive to perceived threats to their nests, they sometimes pose a problem for management and education in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, where large numbers of kites nest in urban habitat such as parks, residential areas, and golf courses. The problem is based on their occasional, but sometimes persistent willingness to treat people as predatory threats to their nests and young by diving rapidly at those who venture too close to the nest trees; almost always those where nests are low to the ground. The danger to humans who understand their behavior is almost nonexistent, although there are cases of actual injury to people.

[edit] References

BirdLife International (2004). Ictinia mississippiensis. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
eNature.com