In 2012, ARCI deployed satellite transmitters on twelve
Snail Kites in peninsular Florida to study their movements in relation to
habitat availability, site preferences, and use of publicly-owned conservation
areas relative to unmanaged lands of various uses and conditions. Five years
later, four of these birds are still providing the data that will help us
inform critical management decisions for their species. These data have
highlighted the Snail Kite’s refined adaptations for nomadism: we’ve seen the
kites venture to other foraging or known nesting sites in a matter of hours and
stay for weeks, months or, sometimes just hours.
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| Radio-tagged male Snail Kite on a power line. Photo credit Jack Haxby 2017. |
Because we have become so impressed with the kites’
extensive knowledge of the landscape gained from thousands of miles of
traveling, we expected that these individuals had selected safe places to wait
out Hurricane Irma. In fact, three of the four Snail Kites, all adult females,
stayed in place as the storm came onshore in south Florida. One female, Harns hunkered down just 5 miles south
of Harns Marsh in Lehigh Acres, her original capture location. The other two
females, Okee Female and Citrus, chose to stay near Immokalee,
Florida, a small agricultural town that was experiencing power outages, food
shortages, and flooding long after the storm. Miraculously, these Snail Kites
outlasted the eye of the then Category 3 hurricane, despite winds up to 129
miles an hour passing through that very area.
The fourth kite, adult male Hwy 441 1, made some last minute adjustments to his evacuation
plan. On 6 September, as Hurricane Irma was wreaking havoc on the Caribbean and
a mandatory evacuation was imposed on Florida Keys’ residents, he was south of
Loxahatchee, Florida, near Twentymile Bend in Palm Beach County. On 8 September, he flew southwest to a freshwater
marsh that is Snail Kite habitat just north of Tamiami Trail in Conservation Area
3A. However, on 10 September, as Irma drove on to Cudjoe Key, he zipped north
37 miles to a tiny tree island standing tall amidst wide-open marsh, where he weathered
the storm. After a few days, well after the rain and winds had passed, Hwy 411 1 moved to within 3 miles of Okee Female just west of Immokalee, Florida,
where he remains as of 20 September.
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| Locations of four tagged Snail Kites when Hurricane Irma made landfall on 11 September. |
We will be monitoring the birds’ data closely over the next
few weeks to see how they will respond to elevated water levels in their
favorite feeding places. Of course, it’s easy to understand how low water
levels reduce snail densities and abundance - and thus the presence of Snail
Kites - in the wet-prairie habitats of south Florida marshes. However, too-deep
water covers normally-emergent vegetation, such as Spike Rush. Apple Snails
climb up the stems of such wet-prairie plants to breathe at the water’s
surface, thus becoming available to foraging Snail Kites. As water levels in
Florida’s unforested wetlands recede, Snail Kites will be behaving again like
the nomads they are, searching for the places with just the right set of
conditions that increase snail availability and the foraging success of this
highly adapted aerial predator.
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| Typical Snail Kite habitat in Conservation Area 3A in south Florida. Apple snails can be found using emergent aquatic plants like Spike Rush (forefront) to breathe air from the surface, making them available to foraging kites. Copyright Allan Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post 2017. |
To see coarse, real-time movement maps of these four Snail
Kites, remember you can follow them and our other satellite-tracked birds from
our Satellite Tracking page on our website.
