There have been a number of impacts on the snail kite’s habitat that have interfered with both its food supply and its hunting strategies. They then take the captured snail to a perch to eat it. The snail kite also needs a very open vegetative habitat so that it easily locate the apple snails and then swoop down unimpeded and grab them at water level.
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Now the snail kite does, at need, take and eat other prey items including crayfish and small fish, but apple snails are its overwhelmingly obligatory food of choice. The snail kite has evolved a highly specialized, sharp-pointed beak that is curved and aligned perfectly to allow it to pull the soft-bodied Florida apple snail out of its shell with great ease and efficiency. The importance of these snails to the snail kite is reflected in the very anatomy of the kite itself. For example, this bird is a very specialized predator that feeds primarily on a single species of freshwater snail called the Florida apple snail ( Pomacea paludosa). All forty-eight of the snail kite nests around Lake Okeechobee were destroyed by Irma, and biologists were worried about the lasting impact of this reproductive disaster on this locally, very endangered sub-species.īut the snail kite had many more stresses prior to this latest hurricane. They were one of the species that was hammered by Hurricane Irma when it hit the Florida peninsula last September (see Signs of Fall 7, October 19, 2017). I have written about snail kites (formerly called the “Everglades snail kite”) ( Rostrhamus sociabilis plubeas) before.
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