The Everglade snail kite is a medium-sized hawk with a wingspan of about 45 inches. The beak is thin and curved. The adult males are gray with black head and wing tips, a white patch at the base of it’s square tail. The female has a fluffy body that has many with dark lines on it. It has a white line over the eye, a white tail patch, yellow legs, and red eyes. The baby kites look like the females, only they are darker and their eyes are brown.
The snail kite almost always eats freshwater apple snails. The Everglades Kite lives in open freshwater marshes that have a lot of apple snails They really like areas with shallow open water like sloughs. These sloughs have plants such as saw grass and spike bushes. The areas also have lots of tree islands (where many kites make their nests).
The snail kite is probably one of the top 3 most endangered species in the Everglades. The snail kite was originally from Cuba but migrated here to find more snails. Now the habitat here is endangering them and they might either become extinct or migrated somewhere else. The number one reason that this has happened is because of the sugar cane farming. That wrecked the habitat of the apple snails (the kite’s main source of food) and the Everglades Kite.