Swallow-Tailed Kite 

 (Eeanoides forficatus, coues.) 



By H. Nehrling 



EXAS is a veritable Paradise for bird-life. Nowhere else in this 

 country have I seen so many birds in gardens and woodlands, 

 in fields and prairies, in thickets and hedges, in swamps and 

 along water courses and ponds. Innumerable Northern birds, 

 particularly members of the Sparrow family and millions of water birds, 

 winter here, and in spring and early summer the air resounds with the 

 sweetest bird music, The Mockingbird and Cardinal, the Scissor-tailed Fly- 

 catcher and the Painted Bunting, the Blue Grosbeak and the Orchard Oriole 

 are so abundant in their haunts that they imbue the landscape with a pe- 

 culiar charm. The song of the Mockingbird and Cardinal is much more 

 varied and beautiful than ever I have heard it in Florida or elsewhere. One 

 of the most characteristic birds of the landscape of Texas, however, is the 

 Swallow-tailed Kite, — a bird as abundant as it is beautiful. Though having 

 seen it occasionally in Wisconsin and northern Illinois, and quite often in 

 the Ozark region of Missouri and still more common in many localities in 

 Florida, it nowhere forms such a conspicuous and ever present feature of the 

 landscape as in Texas, where it is usually seen in numbers of from two and 

 three to even ten and twelve, " matchless objects, chasing each other here and 

 there, far and near, sailing along in easy curves, floating, falling and raising, 

 then darting with meteor-like swiftness, commingling and separating with 

 an abandon and airy ease that is difficult to imagine." (J. W. Preston). I 

 have seen it in great numbers in the bottom woods of the Colorado and Bra. 

 zos Rivers, along Spring Creek and Buffalo Bayou, in Harris County, and 

 also in the beautiful woodlands along the Comal and Guadelupe. In Florida 

 its distribution is quite local, occuring in one locality quite abundantly and 

 not at all in another, 



The best opportunity of observing the Swallow-tailed Kite and many 

 other birds, presented itself to me during my two years' sojourn in the back- 

 woods of Lee County. My little cabin, where I resided with my family, stood 

 on the edge of the West Yegua bottom. Though far away from the centres 



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