White-tailed kite Elanus leucurus

Identification Tips:

• Length: 14.5 inches Wingspan: 40 inches
• Sexes similar
• Medium-sized, graceful, long-winged hawk
• Pointed wings
• Long, squared-off tail
• Short, dark, hooked beak
• Red eye
• Black upperwing coverts appear as black shoulder at rest
• Often hovers and soars with wings held in a dihedral

Adult:

• White head, chin, throat, chest, belly and underwing coverts
• White underwing with primaries darkening on outer wing
• Small black wrist mark on underprimary coverts
• White tail
• Pale gray back and upperwing with flight feathers darkening towards outer wing

Immature:

• Brown head, nape and back
• White face
• Brown streaks on white breast
• Dark upperwing with pale tips to the coverts
• Dark band at tip of white tail

Similar species:

Gulls and terns are similar in coloration but lack black shoulder and wrist marks and have a different bill shape. Mississippi Kite has a similar shape, but is much darker in all plumages, never having a white breast, white tail, or the black shoulder or wrist marks of the White-tailed Kite.

Length and wingspan from: Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B., Zim, H.S., (1966). Birds of North America. New York: Western Publishing Company, Inc.