![]() Adults typically consume their food while flying. She tears it up and feeds it to the young. There he perches, transfers the food to his beak, and passes it to the female. To feed young nestlings, the male kite carries a prey item in one or both feet to the nest. Swallow-tailed Kites hunt on the wing, gleaning prey from deciduous trees, shrubs, and vegetation along rivers, lakes, ponds, marshes, and sloughs. ![]() Stinging and biting insects such as wasps and ants form an important part of the species’ diet. Less commonly, they also eat bats, small fish, and fruit. Swallow-tailed Kites primarily eat flying insects, but during the breeding season they also hunt small vertebrates, including tree frogs, lizards, nestling birds, and snakes. Swallow-tailed Kites are usually found at low elevations, but members of the southern subspecies often breed in sites more than a mile high, given adequately humid conditions. These may include humid lowland forests, riparian forests, and forests mixed with savannas. ![]() The northern subspecies winters in South America, apparently in the same year-round habitat as the southern subspecies, in sites that remain wet enough during the winter to support prey. Nesting and foraging habitat includes slash pine wetlands, edges of pine forest, cypress swamps, wet prairies, freshwater and brackish marshes, hardwood hammocks, and mangrove forests. They require tall trees for nesting and open areas full of small prey to feed their nestlings. ![]() Swallow-tailed Kites breed in swamps, lowland forests, and marshes of the southeastern United States, primarily in Florida and South Carolina. ![]()
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