Subfamily Elaninae - elanid kites (8 species)

Like other elanid kites, Black-shouldered Kites hunt by quartering grasslands for small creatures.

Like all the elanid kites, it is a specialist predator of rodents, which it hunts by hovering in mid-air above grasslands and fields.

(The only other Australasian raptors to hover are the elanid kites which are much lighter in colour and a little larger, and the Brown Falcon, which is much larger and more heavily built, and hovers only with difficulty).

Elanid kites have a near-worldwide distribution, with three endemic species found in the Americas, two in Australia, one each in Africa and southern Asia, while the Black-winged Kite is found over a vast range from Europe and Africa in the west to Southeast Asia in the east.

Some authorities list the group as a formal subfamily, Elaninae.

Subfamily Elaninae - elanid kites (8 species)

The Perninae and possibly the Elaninae are older lineages, as are the Old World vultures.

In 1851 British zoologist Edward Blyth described Elaninae, the "smooth clawed kites" as a formal subfamily of Accipitridae.