Caught in Hurricane Debby's winds, a migrating bird ended up where she started

Last year it was a flamingo-palooza from Hurricane Idalia. Now a migrating swallow-tailed kite was picked up in Debby’s high winds and returned to North Florida.

The bird, named Suwannee 22, was wearing a GPS transmitter on her back which tells the harrowing story of her encounter with Debby’s treacherous winds as the storm crossed Cuba and moved north in the Gulf of Mexico. Coordinates recorded by the Avian Research and Conservation Institute show how the hurricane re-routed the bird during her perilous journey:

Tracking the swallow-tailed kite's flight through a storm

Suwannee 22 started her southward migration on July 31. She spent the night of August 2 in South Florida’s Picayune Strand State Forest, perched on a tree limb resting, likely mustering every ounce of strength she could for the 3,000-mile journey she was about to begin, said Gina Kent, senior conservation scientist with the Avian Research and Conservation Institute. The organization tracks swallow-tailed kites as they migrate from Florida to South America.

When she soared out of the tree the next morning, tail winds aloft should easily have carried her across the Gulf of Mexico to the kites’ traditional stopover on the Yucatan Peninsula, Kent said. It would have been “a perfect way” to start the journey to her summer home. Debby proved too big an obstacle.

Suwannee 22 met Debby's stiff winds just 60 miles or so off Cuba. After failing to navigate past them, she reversed course. Her zigzag pattern shows she tried to recalibrate off St. Petersburg in the hours before Debby was named a hurricane. At that point, Kent is quite certain Suwannee 22 "hitched a ride in the developing eye of the storm.”

By an incredible stroke of fate, as Debby made landfall near Steinhatchee, the kite dropped out of the storm over the nearby Big Bend Wildlife Management Area, said Ken Meyer, the institute's executive director. She was just 35 miles from the home refuge where she was tagged in 2019.

Kite population rebounds

Swallow-tailed kites are some of Florida’s most breathtaking birds, with their deeply forked tails, bright white and glistening blue-black features and aerial acrobatics.

For more than two decades, the Institute Meyer founded in Gainesville, Florida has fitted birds of prey with tiny backpacks to learn more about their movements and inform their protection and conservation. This summer, supported by partnerships, the Institute is tracking more than a dozen swallow-tailed kites from three Southeastern states. The Friends of the Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges provided funding to track Suwannee 22 with her solar-powered transmitter.

In the late 1990s, the kites’ population was estimated at a couple of thousand birds, but today their numbers may be as high as 15,000-20,000, Meyer said. They nest in seven southeastern states but venture farther north in the summer. Her transmitter shows Suwannee 22 spent time this summer in Georgia and Alabama before returning to her home roost.

Tracking another swallow-tailed kite's migration

This animation from the National Audubon Society's Bird Migration Explorer shows the path another kite tagged by Meyer and Kent took on its migration. Green-shaded areas show the kites' summer breeding range and blue shows their winter habitat. The yellow represents a region where the kites may spend the winter and where a subspecies of the kite is found year round.

Kites gather in large roosting colonies to prepare for migration, loading up on calories by eating insects, anoles, frogs and even small mammals and birds. Florida's largest roosts may attract as many as 4,000 birds.

Meyer and others worry about impacts from sightseers and photographers laden with high-powered optics who seek out secluded roosting areas to watch the spectacle when the kites take to the skies each morning. His research shows some kites don’t return the following year when a site attracts too much human traffic. After he couldn't convince officials to restrict early morning access for the two months a year the kites are in one Central Florida national wildlife refuge, he said the colony retreated to a less suitable, but more remote location.

When they depart from Florida, kites often use favorable winds to cross the volatile Gulf. Kent said they have a narrow window. If they go more than 3.5 days without fresh water, they are likely to die in kidney failure.

Flamingo-palooza

The kites aren't the only birds to get caught up in a hurricane. Last summer, dozens of flamingos were caught up in the winds of Hurricane Idalia over the Yucatan then dropped out all along the East Coast after the storm made landfall less than 10 miles from where Debby landed near Steinhatchee.

Ultimately the iconic pink birds were seen in 15 states, thrilling bird watchers and flamingo enthusiasts.  Some of the flamingos returned to the Yucatan, where they were documented over the winter. Many of the birds overwintered in Florida and a few were seen elsewhere in the Southeast this summer. One flamingo was seen as far north as Cape Cod and the Hamptons.

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