All species › Birds of prey › Hawks, eagles and kites › Grey-headed Kite
Grey-headed Kite | Leptodon cayanensis
Grijskopwouw | Gavilán cabeza gris
The Grey-headed Kite is a medium-sized forest raptor with broad, rounded wings and a long tail that spends most of the day hidden in the canopy. It is mainly seen when soaring over the forest in the morning. Juveniles occur in three colour morphs, each resembling a different raptor with which it can be confused.
Voice
A repeated, mewing kee-oww; in display flight and from a perch also a long, cackling series ke-ke-ke-ke.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
46–53 cm. Adults have a pale grey head, blackish upperparts and white underparts; the black tail has two or three narrow grey-white bands. The bill is blue-grey and the legs grey. In flight the black underwing coverts contrast with the pale, finely barred flight feathers, and the small grey head looks dove-like. Juveniles come in three morphs: a pale one with white head and underparts, black crown and black eye-stripe; a rufous one with a rusty neck and a crest; and a dark one with a blackish head and heavily streaked buff underparts. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Hook-billed Kite Chondrohierax uncinatus has a heavy hooked bill, a yellow loral spot and, in adults, barred underparts. Pale juvenile Grey-headed Kites resemble White Hawk Pseudastur albicollis and young hawk-eagles, but those have feathered legs (hawk-eagles) or an all-white head without an eye-stripe. Dark juveniles resemble a young Black Hawk-Eagle Spizaetus tyrannus, which is larger and has feathered legs.
Habitat
Humid lowland and semi-evergreen forest, swamp forest and mangrove edges; also older secondary forest and forest edges along rivers. It hunts from the canopy for arboreal lizards and snakes, frogs, large insects and the larvae of wasps and bees, breaking open their nests; sometimes also eggs and nestlings of birds. The nest is a platform of sticks high in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region only on Trinidad, in the forests of the Northern Range and the forests and swamps of the centre and south, where it is scarce. Outside the region from eastern Mexico through Central America to Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best looked for from a viewpoint over forest in the Northern Range when thermals rise in mid-morning, as adults soar and show the grey head and black-and-white underwing. Perched birds keep hidden in the canopy and are more often given away by their call.
Conservation status
Not threatened. On Trinidad the species depends on the remaining forest and is vulnerable to further clearance; there are few data on its numbers on the island.
Scientific name
Leptodon cayanensis | (Latham, 1790)
Latham described the species in 1790 as Falco cayanensis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Leptodon was introduced in 1836 by Sundevall. Leptodon is Greek, from leptos 'fine, slender' and odous, odontos 'tooth', after the fine tooth-like projection on the edge of the bill. cayanensis means 'of Cayenne', in French Guiana, where the species was described. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.