Kites Observe Strong Family Practices: Photo Story

Kites, like their close relatives eagles, soar high, and frequently hover over our cities. Winter is their breeding season; they descend down from the skies and spend more time in the comfort of the earth, trees, and their mates. Visiting a camp of kites during this season is not an intelligent decision. Winter has set in; and a pair of kites got busy doing the annual maintenance of their old nest.

Kite Family: Photo Story

Their nest is a rough platform of twigs and rags placed in a tall tree fork. Both the male and female take part in nest building, incubation and care of chicks. I kept watch from distance. As they built their nest, they often mated. Slowly the mother settled down to lay eggs and hatch. I began to frequent this camp of kites at the far end of our campus in Bangalore, and watched them standing on the top of a tall building close by. They began to become hostile and protective about their space. It takes a little over 30 days to incubate. The male provides the female with food during incubation. She rarely leaves the eggs unattended for more than a few minutes at a time.

Finally the eggs hatched and there were three chicks. The mother and father birds guard them from other predator birds, snakes, intruding humans, and anything moving.

I kept watching. Chicks stayed at the nest for nearly two months. Siblings show aggression to each other and often the weaker chick is bullied. Here parent birds were found to take special care of the smaller chick. Body feathers began to appear after about 20-22 days. Chicks stood up on their legs after 17–20 days and began flapping their wings after about 30 days. After 50 days, they began to move to branches next to the nest. And it was only a matter of time they just merged with the rest of kite folks around.

From the photo stories series done for Together Magazine.

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