All species › Birds of prey › Hawks, eagles and kites › Plumbeous Kite
Plumbeous Kite | Ictinia plumbea
Donkergrijze wouw | Milano plomizo
The Plumbeous Kite is a slim, falcon-like kite that spends much of the day soaring high over the forest and catching large insects in the air. On Trinidad it is a familiar breeding bird of the Northern Range. Both the northern and the southern populations move into interior South America after the breeding season.
Voice
A thin, whistled see-see-oo, often from a high perch.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
34–38 cm, with long, pointed wings that reach beyond the short tail on a perched bird. Adults are mostly slate grey, with paler head and underparts. In flight a rufous patch on the primaries is visible. The tail is black, with two or three narrow white bands below. The eye is red, the legs orange. Immatures are grey above with white streaks and whitish below with dark streaks; they lack the rufous wing patch.
Confusion species
Mississippi Kite Ictinia mississippiensis, a rare passage migrant, has a paler head, little or no rufous in the wing, pale secondaries above and a tail without white bands. Double-toothed Kite Harpagus bidentatus has shorter, rounder wings, a white throat with a dark stripe and rufous underparts. Swallow-tailed Kite Elanoides forficatus is black and white with a deeply forked tail.
Habitat
Moist broadleaf forest and rainforest, forest edges, cacao and coffee plantations with shade trees and wooded valleys; it sometimes nests in mangroves over water. It catches dragonflies, cicadas and other large insects in flight and eats them on the wing. It likes to rest on bare branches in the tops of tall trees. The nest is a deep stick cup high in a tree, with one, sometimes two eggs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Breeds on Trinidad, mainly in the Northern Range and the forests of the centre of the island; scarce outside the breeding season. Not on Tobago. Outside the region from eastern Mexico through Central America to Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
From February to September in the Arima Valley and around Asa Wright, where the birds circle over the forest from late morning or perch on dead treetops. Against the light the rufous wing patch is the best feature.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species benefits from forest edges, but needs tall trees for nesting.
Scientific name
Ictinia plumbea | (Gmelin, 1788)
Gmelin described the species in 1788 as Falco plumbeus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ictinia was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Ictinia comes from Greek iktinos 'kite'. plumbea is Latin for 'lead-coloured', after the slate-grey plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.