188 
David S. Lee and Mary K. Clark 
the St. Johns River. Evening counts of flying, pre-roosting adult 
kites which could be distinguished from younger birds (see below) 
suggested an average of one adult per kilometer of river, but all 
sightings were in the upper reaches where the river channel was 
the narrowest and the swamp forest best developed. Density calcu- 
lations for just the upper reaches indicated there are about three 
adults per kilometer of river north of Lake George. This calculation 
does not account for secondary tributaries or additional kilometers 
of river frontage created by islands. There is a strong probability 
of additional flocks away from the main river or small flocks which 
were not detected. 
Interestingly, very few young kites were observed. Only 2 of 
the 12 collected birds were immatures, and these were selectively 
collected because of plumage differences in our sampling bias that 
favored nonmolting birds. Of 142 individual bird images on photo- 
graphs (Fig. 1), 61 (43%) were too far away or angled in such a 
way that molt, if present, could not be seen. Of the remaining 81 
images, 84% were adults in molt, and 16% were young-of-the-year. 
Food and feeding habits — Although there is a considerable 
amount of literature on feeding of swallow-tailed kites, much re- 
peats Audubon’s (1840) observations or comments on large, spec- 
tacular prey items noted in field observations. Swallow-tailed kites 
did not come under the attention of the food habit studies of the 
early portion of this century (i.e., McAtee 1935). Skutch (1951, 
1965) and other mention that swallow-tailed kites were seen pluck- 
ing young birds from nests, and Skutch (1965) and Haverschmidt 
(1962) provide firsthand accounts of the importance of insects in 
the diet of South American birds. Bent (1937:49-50) summarizes 
the observations of Audubon and others on food and feeding hab- 
its; he adds “its food includes small snakes, for which it is often 
called ‘snake hawk,’ lizards, frogs, and tree toads. It feeds very 
largely on grasshoppers, locusts, crickets cicadas, beetles of various 
kinds, bees, wasp grubs, dragonflies, cotton worms and various other 
insects.” Unfortunately, Bent did not indicate how this documenta- 
tion was obtained. Presumably it was from a combination of data 
compiled from specimen labels, correspondence, and literature; but 
the size of the series examined and the geographic area and season 
taken are unknown. In our examination of museum specimens we 
found only two references to prey items on specimen tags “ stomach 
contents - grasshoppers, crickets, etc.” (AMNH 352039, Georgia, 
Richmond Co., 21 July 1900, adult, female) and “stomach contents 
- grasshoppers and beetles” (AMNH 352038, Georgia, Richmond 
Co., 23 July 1890, adult, male). Robertson (1988:130) summarizes 
