The White-tailed Kite 



Purple Grackles, attracted no doubt by the surplus of fish which this 

 doughty fisher provides, lodge their nests unrebuked in the substructure 

 of their patrons' palace. In Washington I have found both Magpies and 

 Western Kingbirds enjoying a like privilege. 



No. 325 



White-tailed Kite 



A. O. U. No. 328. Elanus axillaris majusculus Bangs and Penard. 



Synonym. — Black-shouldered Kite. 



Description. — Adult: Above ashy blue or deep pearl-gray, paling on crown, 

 tips of tertials, upper tail-coverts and central pair of tail-feathers; a large black patch 

 on wing, embracing lesser and middle coverts, sooty black; forehead, sides of head, 

 tail (except central pair of feathers) and entire underparts, pure white, or sometimes 

 tinged with pearly-gray on breast; also a small black patch on distal portion of under 

 wing-coverts; shafts of primaries and tail-feathers brown above, white below; tail 

 notched for half an inch or so. Bill and claws black; cere and feet yellow. Young: 

 "Marked with dusky and reddish brown; wing-feathers white-tipped; tail feathers with 

 a subterminal ashy bar" (Coues). Length 393.7-431.8 (15.50-17.00); wing 320 (12.60); 

 tail 183 (7.20); bill 18.6 (.73); tarsus 37.5 (1.48). Female averages larger than male. 



Recognition Marks. — Crow size; easy graceful flight; light coloration, gray and 

 white, with contrasting black on shoulder, unmistakable. 



Remarks. — It is with no little hesitation that I have adopted, in departure 

 from the usage and canons of the American Ornithologists' Union, a modification of 

 the name proposed for the White-tailed Kite by Messrs. Bangs and Penard. Of the 

 justice of the claim for distinction of the California bird from the Pan-American bird, 

 Elanus leucurus, I am not prepared to speak. Conceding its validity, its claim to 

 rating as a subspecies falls under the discussion following; and I have deliberately 

 changed the name "Elanus leucurus majusculus Bangs and Penard" to 'Elanus axillaris 

 majusculus Bangs and Penard," since there is no way (by parenthesis or otherwise) 

 by which the responsibility of "Bangs and Penard" for axillaris may be disclaimed, 

 save by express mention. For according to the older and stricter interpretation, only 

 those forms may be grouped together as subspecies between which "intergradation," 

 or progressive shifting of characters, is known to exist. According to this interpre- 

 tation, also, cognate forms whose neighborly (or shall we say cousinly?) relationships 

 have been sundered, whether by persistent custom or by the interposition of geograph- 

 ical barriers, must be reckoned as full species, if their difference is to be reckoned at all. 

 But it must be confessed that the rigid application of this rule has led us into all sorts 

 of inconsistencies. Disguise it how we may, a name, whether binomial or trinomial, 

 is a value judgment, and it carries with it quantitative as well as qualitative impli- 

 cations. But these quantitative implications we disregarded in defiance alike of our 

 sense of fitness and convenience, when highly diversified forms, as for example, Sphy- 

 rapicus varius and Sphyrapicus ruber (i.e., S. varius ruber of some authorities), are 

 yoked together as one species simply because they exhibit a perfect intergradation; 

 while other forms differing ever so slightly, as for example, Rallus levipes and Rallus 



1648 



