Haliastur indus
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~90% in a week >90%
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 |
Likely
About 60% of wildlife watchers report a Brahminy Kite sighting in Minneriya National Park on a given day, based on 428 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 5th most-seen of the 155 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 90%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
July and September
In those months about 80% of wildlife watchers report a Brahminy Kite in Minneriya National Park on a given day, against about 40% in January, the lowest month. Those are among Minneriya National Park's driest months, with about 55 mm of rain a month against 340 mm in November.
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.
6th of 33
Of the 33 parks where we can rate Brahminy Kite sightings, Minneriya National Park ranks 6th at about 60%. The best odds are in Yala National Park (Sri Lanka, about 70%), Komodo National Park (Indonesia, about 60%) and Wilpattu National Park (Sri Lanka, about 60%). All parks ranked.
Same family: Accipitridae
The closest relatives of the Brahminy Kite that you can see in Minneriya National Park (family Accipitridae, Hawks, Eagles, and Kites) are Crested Serpent Eagle (about 30%), White-Bellied Sea-Eagle (about 20%) and Gray-headed Fish-Eagle (about 20%), 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 Minneriya National Park (428 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), 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.
