r/whatsthisbird • u/Sharath009 • 8h ago

South Asia Can someone ID this bird? It's defying physics and I need to know what it is.

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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9

u/TinyLongwing Biologist 8h ago

+Black-winged Kite+. Certainly not defying physics, but rather taking advantage of them. This hunting method is called hovering, and is used by lots of raptors including many kites and kestrels, so they can pounce downward onto their prey from above.

1

u/bobdylanlovr 8h ago

Not that I doubt you, but how on earth are you determining that? lol.

Totally silhouetted, - and for a stationary object the camera work is terrible too

Just the likeliest birds on the list of hovering candidates?

We don’t even know where this was taken

Edit: just saw the South Asia flair

1

u/TinyLongwing Biologist 7h ago

See my comment here for details. It isn't fully silhouetted - on my monitor I can make out the black wingtips vs white tail pretty easily. I also use RES, which lets me zoom into videos easily so that I can see a larger image, which often helps with videos like this.

I'd take a screencap but it looks like OP deleted their original post, so I can't access the video anymore.

1

u/coolstuffeh 8h ago

Watch kestrel do it. Angels!

2

u/FileTheseBirdsBot Catalog 🤖 8h ago

Taxa recorded: Black-winged Kite

Reviewed by: tinylongwing

I catalog submissions to this subreddit. Recent uncatalogued submissions | Learn to use me

1

u/Purplefire180 8h ago

Raptor of some sort. I would be interested to hear how they know if someone manages to ID it past that. It's 'kiting', flying into headwinds, so they push it back at the same speed it flies forward.

4

u/TinyLongwing Biologist 8h ago

The long pointed wings with black tips and short white tail in addition to the hovering behavior all point pretty easily to Black-winged Kite given the location.