Black Kite

Black Kite

- Koos Pieters

Once you learn to distinguish between the numerous birds of prey in southern Africa, which may take a novice birdwatcher quite a while, one of the easier bird species to identify is the duo of kites that visit our part of the world during summer. Well, put it this way: it is fairly easy to identify the bird you see as a kite; but to decide whether the bird in question is an adult Black Kite or whether it is an immature Yellow-billed Kite is not so easy. The easy part of identifying kites is by their brownish colour, their relatively large wingspan and particularly by their give-away habit of vigorously canting their forked tails from one side to the other during flight.