White-tailed Kite aerial exchanges

White-tailed Kites are both nim­ble and quick and both char­ac­ter­is­tics are nec­es­sary in the aer­i­al feed­ing exchange that fre­quent­ly occurs between the male and female and between the adult male and his chicks when he is wean­ing them from the nest. (In the Kite world  Dad Kite does all the hunt­ing and feed­ing.)

The adult males are sharp-eyed, skilled hunters and need to be since they pro­vide food for both their mates and their chicks. For much of the time while the females are nest­ing food deliv­er is straight­for­ward; fly over the nest hold­ing the mouse or vole by one foot and drop it into the nest. Where­upon the female will tear the rodent apart, feed some to her chicks and devour­ing some her­self.

Breed­ing Pair calls

When the female is not nest­ing, the male may bring the rodent to a branch and hold it there, wait­ing for the female to join him. When she sits beside him, (I have only seen the female sit on his right) the male will drape the rodent over the branch and step to the left, fol­low­ing which she will step over the rodent and take it for her own.

This is not easy to do when on a sway­ing branch but it far eas­i­er than the sec­ond approach. The sec­ond approach is the Aer­i­al Exchange or “Hand-Off.”

The Aer­i­al Exchange

The aer­i­al exchange or “hand-off” is both a part of the mat­ing rit­u­al and an ongo­ing feed­ing prac­tice that may or may not be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the mat­ing rit­u­al. (Per­son­al­ly, I think it is as there is no oth­er rea­son to do it since side-by-side perch­ing and exchang­ing is com­mon and cer­tain­ly eas­i­er to per­form.) Dur­ing the exchange, the male brings a rodent, which he dan­gles from one foot.

The female approach­es from below and behind, ris­ing until she is just below the male. At that point, she rotates bring­ing her feet for­ward and rocks upward, seiz­ing the rodent with both feet.

Some author­i­ties say that this is per­formed pri­or to mat­ing and it may be, but I have seen sev­er­al occa­sions when it is per­formed imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing an episode of coitus, which occurs sev­er­al times dur­ing the mat­ing peri­od.

Wean­ing the Chicks

Hun­gry Juve­nile

When the adult male is tired of bring­ing food to his fledg­ling juve­niles, he approach­es with a dan­gling rodent to tempt them from the nest. When they are hun­gry enough and tired of scream­ing with no response, they will fly from the nest and one or anoth­er will approach the male and try to maneu­ver into posi­tion to grab the mouse.

The next step in the lur­ing process is to tempt them with a rodent and fly, with them fol­low­ing, to an open area, drop the rodent to the ground, and leave it there for them to land and con­sume. The last step is to demon­strate div­ing (stoop­ing) and pounc­ing on a prey and bit­ing through its neck.

This Hand-Off

The hand-off shown here occurred after the nest fell to the ground before the fledg­lings were ready to leave. One in par­tic­u­lar was call­ing for food while stand­ing on a branch just above the site of the fall­en nest.

The male intel­li­gent­ly posi­tioned this trans­fer just above and to the side to where the scream­ing juve­nile would see it.

(Nor­mal­ly the hand-off would have been above the tree where mat­ing took place.)

More Kite Sounds

Your com­ments & ques­tions much appre­ci­at­ed

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