One of the most significant outcomes of the examination of pellets was the finding that vertebrates were scarcely, if at all, represented in the food. Three pellets contained shreds that seemed to be mammal hairs, but in the absence of other remains, the diagnosis is somewhat doubtful. Many species of small mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians were common in the Park or its vicinity, but insects made up nearly all the recorded prey. Audubon (1840:73) mentioned lizards and small snakes in the food and gave a dramatic but perhaps imaginative account of a kite swooping and snatching a lizard (anole) from the topmost branch of a tree. Goss (1891:251) stated: "I have seen them swoop down, and, with their claws, snatch lizards from the ground, rocks and old logs, sometimes stopping to eat them, but, as a rule, feeding on the wing." Bendire (1892:179) stated that the food was mostly insects "probably varied with a diet of small rodents, lizards and snakes." Wayne (1910:71) stated that the food consisted almost entirely of insects and lizards. Bent (1936:67-68), after stating that small snakes, lizards and frogs were sometimes taken, cited a statement in the notes of G. W. Stevens that the latter had found the remains of toads, mice and young rabbits in nests with young. However, Sutton (_op. cit._:51) in a detailed analysis of the stomach contents of 16 kites in Oklahoma, found only insects and remains of one small fish among a total of 358 prey items. Predation on vertebrates must be rare, and perhaps requires further verification in view of the rather vague character of the records so far published. The following list includes both the prey found beneath perches of fledglings and that identified from pellets, the latter mostly from adult kites. coleopteran unspecified 187 carabid 39 cicindelid unspecified 18 _Cicindela_ sp. 2 hydrophilid unspecified 18 _Hydrous_ sp. 1 scarabaeid unspecified 1 _Canthon_ sp. 3 silphid _Necrophorus_ sp. 1 orthopteran unspecified 120 locustid unspecified 34 _Arphia crassa_ 1 _Melanoplus_ cf. _differentialis_, 2 _Schistocerca_ cf. _lineata_ 1 _Xanthippus corallipes_ 2 tettigoniid unspecified 3 _Daihinia_ sp. 1 homopteran cicadid unspecified 15 _Tibicen_ cf. _pruinosa_ 1 lepidopteran (unspecified moth), 3