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Plumbeous Kite | Ictinia plumbea
Donkergrijze wouw | Milano plomizo
The Plumbeous Kite is a slender grey kite with long, pointed wings that spends much of the day soaring over the forest, catching large insects such as dragonflies, cicadas and beetles in flight and eating them from its talons. In the guide area it is a summer visitor that breeds in humid lowland forest from February or March to August or September and then leaves for South America.
Voice
Usually silent. At the nest a high, whistled, descending see-shoo or psee-oo.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
33–38 cm. Adults are slate grey, with a paler grey head and darker back and wings. In flight the rufous patch at the base of the primaries stands out, especially from below. The tail is black with two or three narrow white bands, visible only from below. The eye is red and the legs are orange-yellow. When perched the wingtips project well beyond the tail. Young birds are dark grey above with pale feather edges, and white with dark grey streaks below.
Confusion species
The Mississippi Kite Ictinia mississippiensis lacks rufous in the wing and has a plain black tail without bands; adults have a pale grey head and a pale panel on the secondaries above. The two species migrate together in spring and autumn. The Snail Kite Rostrhamus sociabilis has broader wings, a white tail base and a thin, strongly hooked bill, and lives in marshes.
Habitat
Humid lowland and foothill forest, forest edges, gallery forest and open country with scattered tall trees, also along rivers in drier forest. It nests high in a tree and often perches on a bare branch above the canopy. It hunts in flight above the forest, alone or in loose groups.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Breeds in eastern Mexico, from southern Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí through Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula, and on through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama. Birds arrive in February and March and leave in August and September; on migration groups move along the Gulf coast and the Caribbean side of Central America. From October to January few birds remain in the guide area, most of them in Panama. Outside the guide area in tropical South America to northern Argentina; birds from the guide area winter in South America.
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
From March to August birds perch on bare branches above the forest in the morning and circle over the canopy later in the day, for example in Belize, in Petén and in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica and Panama.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Sensitive to forest clearance, but also present in landscapes with scattered tall trees.
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.