64 BRITISH BIRDS. 
approached it took a lofty flight towards the south, as far as the eye could 
follow, and has not since been heard of.” 
Other specimens of the Swallow-tailed Kite have been said to have been 
killed in England and Ireland, but on evidence that is too unsatisfactory 
to be taken as conclusive (¢f. Zool. 1854, pp. 4166, 4366, 4406, and 
Zool. 1856, p. 5042). A fourth specimen is also said to have been obtained 
on the Mersey, in June 1843. 
The Swallow-tailed Kite is a summer migrant to the Southern § tats 
of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, its breeding-range 
extending somewhat further north, in the valley of the Mississippi, into 
Southern Wisconsin. It winters in the West Indies and in Central 
America, where a few remain to breed in the mountains, wandering south- 
wards into the northern and central portions of South America. 
The Swallow-tailed Kite is said to return to its breeding-grounds in the 
beginning of April, and breeds later than the other birds of prey. Accord- 
ing to Audubon, “in the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, where these 
birds are abundant, they arrive in large companies, in the beginning of 
April, and are heard uttering a sharp plaintive note. At this period I 
generally remarked that they came from the westward, and have counted 
upwards of a hundred in the space of an hour passing over me in a direct 
easterly course. At that season and in the beginning of September, when 
they all retire from the United States, they are easily approached when 
they have alighted, being then apparently fatigued, and busily engaged in 
preparing themselves for continuing their journey.” 
“ Marked among its kind by no ordinary beauty of form and brilliancy 
of colour, the Kite,” writes Dr. Coues in his ‘ Birds of the North West,’ 
“courses through the air with a grace and buoyancy it would be vain to 
rival. By a stroke of the thin-bladed wings and a lashing of the cleft tail, 
its flight is swayed to this or that side in a moment, or instantly arrested. 
Now it swoops with incredible swiftness, seizes without a pause, and bears 
its struggling captive aloft, feeding from its talons as it flies; now it 
mounts in airy circles till it is a speck im the blue ether, and disappears. 
All its actions, in wantonness or in severity of the chase, display the dash 
of the athletic bird, which, if lacking the brute strength and brutal ferocity 
of some, becomes their peer in prowess—like the trained gymnast, whose 
tight-strung thews, supple joints, and swelling muscles, under marvellous 
control, enable him to execute feats that to the more massive or not so 
well-conditioned frame would be impossible. One cannot watch the flight 
of the Kite without comparing it with the thorough-bred racer. The 
Swallow-tailed Kite is a marked feature of the scene in the Southern 
States, alike where the sunbeams are redolent of the orange and magnolia, 
and where the air reeks with the pestilent miasm of moss-shrouded swamps 
that sleep in perpetual gloom.” 
