Produced by Chris Curnow, Tom Cosmas, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net ====================================================================== UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ----------- Volume 12, No. 11, pp. 503-519 ------------------------- October 25, 1963 ------------------------- Observations on the Mississippi Kite in Southwestern Kansas BY HENRY S. FITCH UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE 1963 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, Henry S. Fitch, Theodore H. Eaton, Jr. Volume 12, No. 11, pp. 503-519 Published October 25, 1963 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY JEAN M. NEIBARGER, STATE PRINTER TOPEKA. KANSAS 1963 [Union Logo] 29-7863 Observations on the Mississippi Kite in Southwestern Kansas BY HENRY S. FITCH The Mississippi kite (_Ictinia mississippiensis_) is one of the common raptors of Kansas, occurring regularly and abundantly in summer in that part of the state south of the Arkansas River. In 1961, in an attempt to find out more about the ecology of the species in Kansas, I made several trips to parts of the state where kites could be found in numbers, notably to Meade County State Park in the southwestern part of the state, 71/2 miles south and five miles west of Meade. Little has been written regarding the species in this extreme northwestern part of its breeding range, where it thrives under ecological conditions much different from those that prevail elsewhere in its range. Also, the social behavior and food habits have been given relatively little attention.