Caught in the path of Hurricane Debby, the bird’s flight opened up
Last year was a flamingo-palooza from Hurricane Idalia. Now the migrating red-tailed kite was caught by Debby’s strong winds and headed back to North Florida.
The bird, named Suwannee 22, was wearing a GPS device on its back telling the sad story of its encounter with Debby’s treacherous spirits as the storm crossed Cuba and moved north into the Gulf of Mexico. Links reported by the Avian Research and Conservation Institute show how the hurricane moved the bird during its dangerous journey:
Tracking the flight of a swallow-tailed kite in a storm
Suwannee 22 began moving south on July 31. He spent the night of August 2nd in the Picayune Strand State Forest in South Florida, perched on a resting tree limb, possibly giving himself as much energy as he could for the 3,000-mile trek. which he was about to take. start, said Gina Kent, senior conservation scientist with the Center for Avian Research and Conservation. The organization tracks root-tailed kites as they travel from Florida to South America.
When he came out of the tree the next morning, a strong tail wind could have easily carried him across the Gulf of Mexico to a traditional kite-flying site on the Yucatan Peninsula, Kent said. It would have been the “perfect way” to start the journey to his summer home. Debby was a huge distraction.
Suwannee 22 encountered Debby’s strong winds just 60 miles from Cuba. After failing to pass them, he changed course. His zigzag pattern shows that he tried to restore St. Petersburg hours before Debby was named a hurricane. At that point, Kent is certain Suwannee 22 “ran into the developing eye of the storm.”
In a strange coincidence, when Debby made landfall near Steinhatchee, a kite came down the storm in the nearby Big Bend Wildlife Management Area, said Ken Meyer, the agency’s executive director. He was only 35 kilometers from his refuge where he was tagged in 2019.
Kite’s population is going way back
Swallow-tailed kites are among Florida’s most spectacular birds, with their deeply forked tails, bright white and blue-black wings and aerial acrobatics.
For more than two decades, the Gainesville, Florida-based Meyer Institute has caged birds of prey to learn more about their movements and inform their protection and conservation. This summer, supported by partnerships, the Center is tracking more than a dozen kites from three Southeast states. Friends of the Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges provided funding to track Suwannee 22 with his solar generator.
In the late 1990s, the number of kites was estimated at a few thousand birds, but today the number can be as high as 15,000-20,000, said Meyer. They live in seven southeastern states but in the summer they go to the northeast. His transcript shows the Suwannee 22 spent time this summer in Georgia and Alabama before returning home.
Tracking the migration of another kite
This animation from the National Audubon Society’s Bird Migration Explorer shows how one kite tagged by Meyer and Kent took its migration. Green shaded areas show summer kite species and blue shows their winter range. Yellow represents the area where kites can spend the winter and where a small species of kite is found all year round.
Kites gather in large colonies to prepare for migration, carrying calories by eating insects, anoles, frogs and even small mammals and birds. Florida’s largest wetlands can attract up to 4,000 birds.
Meyer and others worry about the impact from observers and photographers carrying high-powered binoculars who seek remote shelters to watch the sight of the kites rising into the sky each morning. something. His research shows some kites don’t come back the following year when the site attracts more people. After he failed to convince officials to restrict morning access for two months a year, the kites are in the same Central Florida state wildlife refuge, he said the colony has returned to an inappropriate location, but it’s far away.
Leaving Florida, kites tend to use fair winds to cross the unstable Gulf. Kent said they have a narrow window. If they go more than 3.5 days without clean water, they may die from kidney failure.
Flamingo-palooza
Kites are not the only birds affected by a hurricane. Last summer, large numbers of flamingos were caught in Hurricane Idalia’s winds over the Yucatan and descended all over the East Coast after the storm made landfall less than 10 miles from Debby. who arrived near Steinhatchee.
The pink birds were eventually spotted in 15 states, delighting bird watchers and flamingo enthusiasts. Some of the flamingos returned to Yucatan, where they were recorded during the winter. Many birds wintered in Florida and a few were seen elsewhere in the southeast this summer. Some flamingos were seen as far north as Cape Cod and the Hamptons.
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