Following the advances in our understanding of these taxa, it’s nowadays generally accepted that these birds are not true Black-eared Kites from Far East Asia, but birds from the intergradation region between migrans and lineatus located somewhere in Western/Central Asia.Īlthough the previous publications are fundamentally right, the description of “a vast intergradation area” is quite coarse-grained and in my opinion can be refined. Since the Lincolnshire (UK) bird in 2006, several kites with Black-eared features (mainly juveniles), of apparent eastern origin, have been recorded in winter in different European countries. Forsman showed numerous examples of these intergrades from central Kazakhstan, and a few from Mongolia. This subject has also been covered in detail by Dick Forsman in his last book he used the terms Black Kite for migrans and Black-eared Kite for lineatus and introduced the concept of Eastern Black Kite to describe the intergrades that extend from Western Russia to Central Siberia. McLoughlin (in Garner, 2008) considered Black-eared Kites to be found from western Siberia eastwards. Shirihai (1996) discussed the presence of “Eastern populations of migrans in the Middle East”. This question has been subsequently answered in the literature with different approaches. Looking retrospectively at the discussion, it seems clear now that it was strongly obscured by lack of clarity around the key underlying question of “ what is a Black-eared Kite?”, including not just how it looks, but also its distribution range. This bird generated both great interest and intense debate about its identity, with many birders supporting the hypothesis of it not being a Black-eared Kite, but a Black Kite of eastern origin.
#Japanese kite bird series#
Amazing! Terribly sorry about the awful exposure settings, but an interesting series of snaps.The potential presence of Black-eared Kites ( Milvus migrans lineatus) in Western Europe has been on the table since a juvenile kite seen in Lincolnshire (UK) in November 2006 was considered by some to be a genuine Black-eared Kite. Just look at the expressions of the man with the face to the camera, and the (non) movement of his hair from the rush of air. Now, one would imagine that such a huge bird would make a tremendous noise but these bird’s actually have feathers designed to soften any sounds or rush of air from the bird’s descent.
Just as I swung the camera around with no time to refocus or change the exposure settings it swooped down. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed one particular bird (out of the 50 in the area) who was getting into attack mode, hovering silently over two men on the beach eating their lunches.
#Japanese kite bird full#
I used a 500mm telescopic lens on my D700 full frame DSLR. I was photographing the birds circling over the beach and I had my camera set to overexpose to catch the contrast between the bright blue sky and the dark undersides of the birds. But in this area they are much more interested in raiding the bento boxes (packed lunches) of beach goers. It’s the most common bird of prey in the world and normally they prey on fish. It’s also the home of a large population of tobi, or Black Kites, in English. The area close to the Pacific Ocean is known as Shonan and is a favorite vacation spot for stressed out Tokyoites. On Saturday I went to Kamakura City just south of Tokyo.
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