What is black and white and flies all over all day long?
The swallow-tailed kite is a snack-food junkie if ever there was one. It spends most of the day aloft, eating on the run, so to speak – catching bugs and eating them in one swoop, then circling and diving to devour another. “Elanoides forficatus” is also an energy miser. The kite uses thermal uplifts and winds to spend the day gliding, merely flipping one side of its forked tail to change direction. Rapidly flapping wings are not for this raptor. From its nest in the top of tall pines and cypress trees, it spies arboreal vertebrates – reptiles, amphibians and sometimes a fledgling from another nest. It can seize that prey and eat it on the wing. The black-and-white beauty is a symbol of many things. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) features the kite, a white-tailed deer and spotted seatrout on its logo. Motorists probably have noticed an image of the kite on signs throughout the state designating the 489 Great Florida Birding Trail sites. If you go to the Bre
