How To Help Protect Swallow-tailed Kites

Swallow-tailed Kites are beautiful birds with distinctive tails and can be fun to watch as they swoop and dive through the air. While predominantly found in the Southeast, the population of kites has dwindled significantly in recent years.

“Forest habitat loss still remains the main threat to this species,” American Bird Conservancy vice president Emily Jo Williams tells Southern Living.

What Are Swallow-tailed Kites?

The Swallow-tailed Kite is one of North America’s most beautiful birds of prey. It’s a large, black-and-white bird—similar in size to a large hawk —with long, narrow wings spanning four feet, and a distinctive, long forked tail.

“They are relatively easy to identify. They nest and forage on Southeast working forests, and they have an amazing migratory story where they migrate thousands of miles back to their wintering grounds in South America every late summer,” Williams says.

Williams adds that Swallow-tailed Kites can be fun to observe, as they can appear to hang motionless in the air, then dive, roll, or swoop with ease. Their diet consists mainly of large flying insects like dragonflies, grasshoppers, beetles, and cicadas, but they also capture frogs, snakes, and lizards, often plucking them off tree branches. 

Kites spend their spring and summer months in the Southeastern U.S. coastal plain, from South Carolina to Texas and throughout Florida. By July and August, they migrate south to Brazil and Bolivia.

Why Swallow-tailed Kites Need Protection

Williams says that kites need protection now more than ever, because the same habitat kites use in the Southeast often overlaps with forests integral to the production of fiber and paper products. 

The Swallow-tailed Kite once nested in at least 21 states as far north as Minnesota prior to the early 1900s, but a sharp population decline from 1800 through 1940 resulted in the present limited distribution in just seven Southeastern states with much of the population concentrated in Florida. Though the reasons for the decline are not well understood, large-scale forest loss, illegal shooting, and egg collecting may have contributed. 

Today, there are only 150,000 kites worldwide, with 15,000 to 25,000 in the United States.

“After decades of conservation work, the population of Swallow-tailed Kites in the U.S. has stabilized, thanks in part to large expanses and sustainable management of working forests,” Williams says.

The species is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and state laws, and it’s against the law to harm or shoot a Swallow-tailed Kite, take one from the wild, or destroy a nest or eggs.

The Best Way To Protect Swallow-tailed Kites On Your Property

Williams says the majority of the South's forest land—“millions of acres”—where Kites can be found is privately owned by individuals and families.

“If these birds are found on your property, one way to help is to retain larger-sized trees wherever and whenever possible,” she says. “Swallow-tailed Kites benefit from large woodland areas, with a mosaic of forest conditions that include very tall trees for nesting, and open areas for foraging on prey.”

In the Southeast, pairs build their nests, lined with Spanish moss or other soft vegetation, high in the crowns of tall trees such as pine, bald cypress, or cottonwood, near marshes, rivers, and swamps. 

“They often nest in trees 60 to 70 years old that reach 80 to 90 feet tall,” Williams says. “Kites are also highly social and nest where other kites are present, often returning to the same spot each year.

Anyone can help by reporting kite sightings to the Avian Research and Conservation Institute.

“This helps with ongoing coordinated conservation and reforestation efforts with American Bird Conservancy, Orleans Audubon Society, landowners, and other partners that are helping the kites make a comeback,” Williams says.

Since 2020, the kite has benefited from a partnership between American Bird Conservancy, Avian Research and Conservation Institute, International Paper, and other partners that have been tracking Swallow-tails’ migrations routes via GPS transmitters for several years. 

“This kind of data is helping better understand where exactly the birds travel, feed, nest, and how to best protect their Southeastern habitats as well as guide forest management and conservation efforts,” Williams says.