Plate 72 – Swallow-tailed Hawk

While John James Audubon was visiting Louisville, Kentucky, in the summer of 1820, he had the chance to watch a pair of Swallow-tailed Hawks (now the Swallow-tailed kite) rear four chicks near the Falls of the Ohio. According to Cornell’s e-Bird system, no one else has seen Swallow-tailed kites at the site. When Audubon later traveled to other areas further to the south, the bird became more numerous. Audubon considered the bird as “extremely common” while exploring “the Attacapas and Oppellousas,” an area that makes up most of present-day southern Louisiana. And on one occasion while in Mississippi when birds were migrating in the spring, Audubon counted over 100 Swallow-tailed kites “in the space of an hour, passing over me.” The most Swallow-tailed kites that anyone in Louisiana and Mississippi has recorded on Cornell’s e-Bird system are the 50 that passed over Brett James just east of the Pascagoula River State Wildlife Management Area on April 26, 2026 (see eBird Checklist S328042346).