Kite (bird)

Kite is the common name for certain birds of prey in the family Accipitridae, particularly in the subfamilies Elaninae and Perninae and certain genera within Buteoninae. The term is derived from Old English cȳta, onomatopoeic from the call notes of the buzzard (Buteo buteo) and red kite (Milvus milvus). The name, having no cognate names in other European languages, is thought to have arisen in England; it apparently originally denoted the buzzard, as the red kite was then known by the widespread Germanic name 'glede' or 'glead', and was only later transferred to the red kite as "fork-tailed kite" by Christopher Merret in his 1667 Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum. By the time of Thomas Pennant's 1768 British Zoology, the name had become fixed on the red kite, other birds named 'kite' around the world being named from their then-perceived relationship to it.

Some authors use the terms "hovering kite" and "soaring kite" to distinguish between Elanus and the milvine kites, respectively. The group may also be differentiated by size, referring to milvine kites as "large kites", and elanine kites as "small kites".