- Animals
- ›Chordates
- ›Vertebrates
- ›Birds
- ›Hawks, Eagles, Kites, and Allies
- ›Hawks, Eagles, and Kites
- ›Elanine Kites
- ›Elanus
On eBird ↗
Letter-winged Kite
Live sightings near you, the range map, bar charts of when it is seen, and Macaulay Library photos and recordings.
Letter-winged Kite
Elanus scriptus
The letter-winged kite (Elanus scriptus) is a small, rare and irruptive raptor native to Australia. The adult is predominantly pale grey and white with black shoulders and red eyes. It has a highly distinctive black underwing pattern of a shallow ‘M’ or 'W' shape, seen when in flight. This distinguishes it from the otherwise similar black-shouldered kite. Roosting during the day in well-foliaged trees and hunting at night, it is the world's only fully nocturnal Accipitriformes...
Listen
Looking for field recordings…
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Elanus scriptus in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 5274.