Haliastur indus
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~70%
The brahminy kite (Haliastur indus), also known as the red-backed sea-eagle, is a medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors, such as eagles, buzzards, and harriers, found in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and Australia. The brahminy kite is found mainly on the coast and in inland wetlands, where it feeds on dead fish and other prey. Adults have a reddish-brown body plumage contrasting with their white head and breast which make them easy to distinguish from other birds of prey.
In 1760, French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson described and illustrated the Brahminy kite in the first volume of his Oiseaux based on a specimen collected in Pondicherry, India. He used the French name L'aigle de Pondichery. The brahminy kite was included by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. It was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither Brisson nor Buffon included a scientific... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kollam | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Colachel | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 3 | Kochi | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 4 | Thiruvananthapuram | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Ponnani | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Kozhikode | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 7 | Mysuru | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 8 | Bengaluru | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 9 | Coimbatore | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 10 | Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Brahminy Kite sighting in Karachi on a given day, based on 20 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 40th most-seen of the 97 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 70%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Brahminy Kite in Karachi on a given day, against about 10% in January–March, May–August and November, the lowest months. That is one of Karachi's driest months, with almost no rain against 75 mm in August.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Brahminy Kite sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
18th of 40
Of the 40 cities where we can rate Brahminy Kite sightings, Karachi ranks 18th at about 20%. The best odds are in Kollam (India, over 90%), Colachel (India, about 90%) and Kochi (India, about 80%).
Same family: Accipitridae
The closest relatives of the Brahminy Kite that you can see in Karachi (family Accipitridae, Hawks, Eagles, and Kites) are Black Kite (about 90%), Western Marsh-Harrier (about 10%) and Long-legged Buzzard (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Brahminy Kite is recorded against all the birds logged in Karachi (20 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
