many observers, as tlie one last mentioned, Schomburgk,
Prince Max, Nnttall and Wilson. Audubon writing of tlie
species says:—
“ They always feed 011 the wing. In calm and warm
weather, they soar to an immense height, pursuing the large
insects called Musquito Ilawks, and performing the most
singular evolutions that can be conceived, using their tail
with an elegance of motion peculiar to themselves. Their
principal food, however, is large grasshoppers, grass-cater-
pillars, small snakes, lizards, and frogs. They sweep close
over the fields, sometimes seeming to alight for a moment to
secure a snake, and holding it fast by the neck, carry it off,
and devour it in the air. When searching for grasshoppers
and caterpillars, it is not difficult to approach them under
cover of a fence or tree. When one is then killed and falls
to the ground, the whole flock comes over the dead bird, as
if intent upon carrying it off.”
Dr. Bonyan (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1851, p. 57) in some
notes on this species as observed by him in British Guyana,
states that it takes small birds when feeding, adding that it
soars to a greater height than any other Hawk known to him,
and Mr. Robert Owen has given an interesting account (Ibis,
1860, p. 240) of a large flock of Swallow-tailed Kites, from
an hundred-and-fifty to three-hundred in number, which
he encountered while travelling in Guatemala. They were
gliding to and fro near the ground, some of them within a
dozen yards of it, in a close body, not one straying from the
rest, in a manner that reminded him of our English Swifts,
and he found that they were feeding upon a swarm of bees
which was slowly skirting the hillside. “ At times,” he
continues, “ birds would pass within four or five yards of
us, giving us time to observe their movements accurately.
Every now and then the neck would be bent slowly and
gracefully, bringing the head quite under the body, the beak
continuing closed. At the same time, the foot, with the
talons contracted as if holding an object in its grasp, would
be brought forward until it met the beak. This position
was only sustained a moment, during which the beak was
seen to open; the head was then, with closed beak, raised
again, and the foot thrown back. This movement was
repeated very frequently, precisely the same actions being-
observable on every occasion, and this not only in the case of
one bird, but of all of them.”
Nuttall says that the Swallow-tailed Kites at times also
seize upon the nests of locusts and wasps, and, like the
Honey-Buzzard, devour both the mature insects and their
larvaj; but snakes and lizards form their usual food. Mac-
gillivray remarks that this species, unlike (so far as is known)
all other Falconidce, possesses no crop or enlargement of the
oesophagus. Common as this bird is in various parts of
America, very little seems known about its mode of breeding.
Audubon describes the nest as placed on the top branches of
the tallest trees and resembling that of a Crow, being formed
of sticks, intermixed with Spanish moss and lined with
coarse grasses and a few feathers. Mr. Dresser, who found
the species very abundant in some parts of Texas, and had a
good opportunity of observing it, states (Ibis, 1865, p. 326)
that those he noticed in the month of May were preparing
their nests in some high cotton-wood trees in a grove close
to a creek near the Rio Colorado. He did not succeed in
getting any of the eggs, but Mr. Henry Buckley has kindly
forwarded the following description of one which he has
received from Iowa :— “ White with a very faint bluish tinge,
marked all over, especially at the smaller end, with dark umber
blotches of two shades. Except in size it is not unlike
some Ospreys’, and measures l -78 by 1-44 in.” Another
egg from the same source now in Mr. Dresser’s collection is
much less highly coloured, and that gentleman remarks of it
that “ the grain most resembles that of a Marsli-Harrier’s,
but it has no gloss whatever. In form also it is not unlike
the egg of that bird, and measures 1‘95 by 1-5 in .” Mr.
Buckley’s correspondent informs him that the eggs are
usually, if not always, two in number, and are laid at the
end of May or early in June, in nests resembling that
described, as above, by Audubon.
The following is Mr. Fothergill’s description, as above
mentioned, of the example taken in Yorkshire in 1805 :—