Wildlife : Birdwatching - 1434 🐦

🦉 The black kite (Milvus migrans)

📚 Milvus (lat) - kite
📚 migrans (lat.) - migrating

For all their seeming formidable appearance, these guys are mostly harmless. They prefer to eat carrion or sick animals, for which they can be called "orderlies".
For example, yesterday I saw in the courtyard of my house how 8 kites circled over garbage cans, as they saw fish offal and leftovers there. And a few days ago, one kite in the same place profited from a dead sparrow.

However, they are able to catch live prey, but they do it poorly. The thing is their physique, they have a small muscle mass, compared to other birds of prey like them. Therefore, they cannot quickly and swiftly dive on the victim and drag heavy animals.
Therefore, sometimes they are lucky, and they manage to catch fish from the river, or a small sick or injured rodent.