The red kite (Milvus milvus)
is a medium-large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors
such as eagles, buzzards, and harriers. The species currently breeds in the Western Palearctic region
of Europe and northwest Africa, though it formerly also occurred in northern Iran.[2] It is resident in the
milder parts of its range in western Europe and northwest Africa, but birds from northeastern and
central Europe winter further south and west, reaching south to Turkey. Vagrants have reached north
to Finland and south to Israel, Libya and Gambia.[2][3]
The red kite was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1 758 in the 1 0th edition of his
Systema Naturae under the binomial name Falco milvus.[4] The word milvus was the Latin name for
the bird.[5] In 1 799 the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède moved the species to the
genus Milvus creating the tautonym.[6]
The genus Milvus contains two other species: the black kite (M. migrans) and the yellow-billed kite (M.
aegyptius).[7] The red kite has been known to successfully hybridize with the black kite in captivity
where both species were kept together, and in the wild on the Cape Verde Islands and infrequently in
other places.[9] The red kites on the Cape Verde Islands are (or rather were) quite distinct in
morphology, being somewhat intermediate with black kites. The question whether the Cape Verde kite
should be considered a distinct species (Milvus fasciicauda) or a red kite subspecies has not been
settled. A mitochondrial DNA study on museum specimens suggested that Cape Verde birds did not
form a monophyletic lineage among or next to red kites.[1 0] This interpretation is problematic: mtDNA
analysis is susceptible to hybridization events, the evolutionary history of the Cape Verde population is
not known, and the genetic relationship of red kites is confusing, with geographical proximity being no
indicator of genetic relatedness and the overall genetic similarity high,[11 ] perhaps indicating a relict
species. Given the morphological distinctness of the Cape Verde birds and that the Cape Verde
population was isolated from other populations of red kites, it cannot be conclusively resolved as to
whether the Cape Verde population was not a distinct subspecies (as M. migrans fasciicauda) or even
species that frequently absorbed stragglers from the migrating European populations into its gene
pool. The C. Verde population became effectively extinct since 2000, all surviving birds being hybrids
(f rom wikipedia)