Breeding
The breeding season is usually July to November. The nest is a large untidy shallow cup of sticks usually in the foliage near the top of trees, some five metres (15 ft) or higher off the ground. It is lined with green leaves and other material such as regurgitated pellets. Multiple nests may be seen in single trees in cases of rodent plagues and hence abundance of food. The clutch consists of three to four, or rarely five or even six, dull white eggs measuring 44 x 32 mm with red-brown blotches and tapered oval in shape. The markings are often heavier around the larger end of the egg. The female incubates the eggs for 30 days, and nestlings remain in the nest for around 32 days.
Read more about this topic: Letter-winged Kite
Famous quotes containing the word breeding:
“The surest route to breeding jealousy is to compare. Since jealousy comes from feeling “less than” another, comparisons only fan the fires.”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)
“The test of a man’s or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel. Anybody can behave well when things are going smoothly.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)