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We Can Count Can you? With the set-up nearly complete, Kent returns to the vehicles parked just out of sight to retrieve the lure: a rehabilitated but non-releasable Great Horned Owl nicknamed Einstein.
Between the two of them, Meyer and Kent have been doing this kind of work for more than 50 years, so they know they might have a long wait ahead of them with little more to do than swat deer flies. Or all hell could break loose in an instant. With that in mind, Kent takes her seat on a small camp stool and settles in the only way she seems to know how—back straight, ears alert, eyes constantly scanning through the sliver-thin window.
These birds will persistently, if not aggressively, defend their nests against Great Horned Owls, their most fearsome predators. Ten minutes in, a kite is circling overhead, delivering an alarm call that sounds like a squeaky toy in the clutches of a hyperactive dog. As the kite falls silent, Kent looks away for a moment to adjust her stool.
Meyer arrives a moment later, and the two begin to untangle the puzzled bird. Still, the beauty of a kite in hand is nothing compared to that of a kite in flight, and the team is anxious to reunite this one with its mate and two others now worriedly circling and calling overhead. They weigh and measure the bird, band it, take feather samples for genetic testing.
With its data sheet completed and its transmitter turned on, the kite, now named Suwannee after the location of its tagging, is ready to go. The entire process, from capture to release, took little more than 30 minutes, but for Kent, it was long enough to form a bond. I feel very responsible. I just want to make sure they do okay.
The best way to do that is to send Suwannee back on his way, but this time carrying a payload that may help to ensure the well-being of Swallow-tailed Kites for generations to come.
S everal days before the successful tagging of Suwannee, I visited Meyer and Kent at the suburban Gainesville headquarters of the Avian Research and Conservation Institute, an organization Meyer founded in , just a year after he fitted his first kite with a satellite transmitter. Over coffee and leftover Easter candy, we pore over maps etched with colorful, squiggly lines representing the movements of tagged birds, and the two scientists do their best to encapsulate more than 30 years of research.
When Meyer first began studying kites as a post-doc at the University of Florida in , little was known about the species. This was particularly surprising to the young biologist given how visible the birds are during the breeding season, especially over their current stronghold of Florida. Still, at the time, no one knew how many Swallow-tailed Kites existed, whether their populations were rising or falling, which habitats were critical to their survival, or where the birds went when they disappeared for the winter.
Meyer saw the lack of knowledge as a research opportunity—and a desperate need. They discovered that the birds rely on a diverse mosaic of habitat types to meet their foraging and nesting needs. And with satellite transmitters, they finally discovered in where the kites go when they leave the United States in late summer: A 5,mile odyssey takes the birds across the Gulf of Mexico, down Central America, over the Andes, and across the Amazon Basin to ranchland in southern Brazil that bears a striking resemblance to north-central Florida.
Permanent habitat loss due to timber harvest and agriculture has almost certainly played a role. But the researchers say there are also other factors limiting kites. One is the increase in predators like Great Horned Owls and Red-tailed Hawks that, according to Coulson, has been correlated with the ongoing sprawl of suburbs around cities in the Southeast.
It might be five miles or ten miles away. Despite these limiting factors, the researchers have found that the overall population of kites that breed in the United States is larger than once thought. Meyer now puts the figure at somewhere between 15, and 25, individuals. And, promisingly, that number appears to have increased somewhat over the past decade.
In the late 90s, Meyer and Kent began finding Swallow-tailed Kites nesting on timber company pine plantations. L ate one hazy afternoon, Meyer, Kent, and I drive southeast of Gainesville to visit what, in northern Florida at least, has become a fairly typical Swallow-tailed Kite nest. When we turn off County Road onto a dusty access road that cuts deep into the plantation, the contrast between habitat types on our right and left is striking.
On one side stands a cluster of foot-tall slash pines, home to a neighborhood of three kite families, each with a nest built into the uppermost branches of the tallest trees. On the other side of the road is a clearcut. Grasses and forbs now cover the insults that heavy equipment left in the earth. And across the entire expanse of some 85 acres, four-foot-tall pines shoot up at regular intervals where they were planted immediately after harvest.
More than half of all known Swallow-tailed Kite nests in the United States are in tracts much like this one. Although these tracts are by no means pristine, commercial forests still provide critical habitat. Timber harvest mimics those disturbances.
It began in the late 90s with he and Kent seeking permission from timber companies to survey for kite nests on their land. Several commercial foresters obliged, and one, Steve Lowrimore, took particularly keen interest in the research. They often nest in loose colonies with other kites, usually by water. Both males and females incubate and feed the growing babies. Chicks leave the nest to take their first flight at around 40 days after hatching.
Have you ever heard of obligate siblicide? Me either, but in studying this bird I came across this term. Many females lay two eggs. The one that hatches first often kills the other one so it can have all of the food and attention from its parents.
Talk about extreme! A kite with nesting material Share on Facebook. Follow us. Previous Weekly Puzzler White and Black. Next Quote of the Week
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