Black Winged Kite Released (IMAGE)
Caption
Black-winged kites (Elanus caeruleus) are small raptors (birds of prey) with high hunting success that prey on small animals such as voles, as shown in the photo. We tracked some kites with GPS (shown in the second photo and the movie) and some with ATLAS tags. Analyzing high-resolution data from ATLAS-tracked kites, we found very large variation in the duration that kites remain static within a food patch, including very short and very long stops, making stop duration rather unpredictable. This might be explained by a predator-prey co-evolution race, in which kites wait until voles get out their burrows to forage in the fields, while voles minimize exposure in risky times and habitats.
Credit
Credit: Yosef Kiat, Gabe Rozman and Ran Nathan, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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