INORTH AMEEIGAN WHITE-TAILED KITE 59 



head is white and the crown mostly "cinnamon", heavily streaked 

 with dusky ; the back and scapulars are "hair brown" to "drab-gray", 

 broadly edged with "cinnamon", or white and "cinnamon" ; the tail 

 is "pale to pallid mouse gray", with a darker subterminal band and 

 white tips; the lesser and median wing coverts are brownish black, 

 the latter tipped with white; the remiges are "light to pale mouse 

 gray", mostly white-tipped, the primaries darker near the tips; the 

 under parts are white, heavily suffused with "cinnamon" on the breast 

 and less so on the belly; the lores are dusky. Dr. Pickwell (1930) 

 adds : "Toes and tarsus, yellow ; beak and claws, black ; eyelids, blue ; 

 iris, brown," 



This plumage is worn but a short time, and the bright colors soon 

 disappear by wear and fading. A postjuvenal molt begins in July 

 and continues through the fall; it involves all the contour plunaage 

 and the lesser and median wing coverts. Some November birds have 

 nearly completed the molt but are still largely brown on the back. 

 A January bird shows the last of this molt and is renewing the 

 scapulars and tail feathers. Except for the wing quills, which are 

 probably not shed until later, the young bird is practically adult by 

 spring. 



Adults apparently have a prolonged molt late in summer and in 

 fall ; a December bird has not yet completed the molt of the wings 

 and tail but is otherwise in fresh plumage. I have seen South Amer- 

 ican birds molting their flight feathers in July and October, their 

 winter and spring. 



Food. — The food of this kite includes field mice, wood rats, pocket 

 gophers, ground squirrels, shrews, small birds, small snakes, lizards, 

 frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and other insects. Probably 

 very few birds and few of the larger mammals are taken, but mainly 

 the smaller vertebrates and the insects named. It is evidently a 

 highly beneficial species. Dr. Loye Miller (1926) noted, from the 

 examination of a well-filled stomach — 



* * * that both its appetite aud its table manners are far from dainty. 

 Remains of four meadow mice (Microtus) and an entire shrew {Swex ornatus) 

 were identified in the contents of stomach and crop. The shrew was absolutely 

 entire. The largest mouse had been torn apart in the lower thoracic region 

 and the hinder portion bolted entire with skin and fur in place. Two mouse 

 heads had been swallowed hair and all. The fore quarters of the mice seemed 

 to have been stripped of skin, but great masses of skin and fur had been 

 swallowed after stripping them off. Viscera and small bones indicated that 

 most of both mice had been eaten, and there is no reason to believe that any 

 part had been discarded. Well cleaned bones from two other MiG)-otits skulls 

 were still retained in the stomach. 



Dr. Pickwell (1930) writes: 



The Kite hunts, not by soaring and searching from a lofty position as do 

 Buteos, nor by the low harrier method of the Marsh Hawk, but by a rather 



