The Snail Kite uses its slender, curved bill to extract its primary prey, the apple snail, from its shell. Our team conducts range-wide snail kite population monitoring and research. The bird’s curved beak is slightly off-center to allow it to easily extract the snail … An Everglade snail kite hovers over the water’s edge along a grass island, swoops down and with its talons grasps an apple snail about the size of a golf ball. We work in collaboration with federal, state, and local agencies to help inform decision-making for conservation efforts of the critically endangered Everglade Snail Kite. The Everglade snail kite feeds almost exclusively on apple snails (Pomacea), which are captured at or near the water’s surface. The Everglade snail kite is a mid-size raptor named for its unusual curved bill, used to pluck snails from their shells. The Everglade Snail Kite is a bird of prey with a very particular appetite: it feeds almost exclusively on apple snails, a freshwater mollusk that occurs in Central and South Florida wetlands including the Everglades. Males are grey while females are a soft brown or cinnamon color and both sexes have bright orange legs. It has no need for fast flight, because it seeks only snails -- and only one particular sort, the apple snail. The Everglade Snail Kite Research Team is a group of dedicated and hard-working ecologists, students, and field biologists. The Everglade snail kite is found in southern Florida with a range extending south to Cuba and South and Central America.
Snail kites hunt for snails by flying slowly or perching over sparsely-vegetated lake shores or marshes, and grabbing snails with their feet that are within six inches (16 centimeters) of the water’s surface. The subspecies from Florida In the wide-open marshes of central Florida, this broad-winged bird glides slowly and low over the sawgrass. The U.S. FWS's Threatened & Endangered Species System track information about listed species in the United States This snail is strongly affected by water levels, and drainage of wetlands has hurt populations of both the snail and the kite. Behavior. The Everglade snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis) is a wide-ranging New World raptor species found primarily in lowland freshwater marshes in tropical and subtropical America from Florida, Cuba, and Mexico south to Argentina and Peru.