This is bird note.

Swallow-tailed kites live in Central and South America year round, but there's a subspecies that migrates to the U.S. in the summer.

A hundred years ago, populations of these swallow-tailed kites nested in 21 states.

Today, they breed in only a third of those states and are listed

as endangered, threatened, or of conservation concern in almost all of them, including in the Black Belt region of Alabama where Joe Farms is located.

We roughly have 200 acres with about six miles of trails.

Christopher Joe started organizing birds and nature tours on his family farm in 2019.

Just a couple years before that, his dad Cornelius had noticed the swallow-tailed kites hunting as he worked the fields.

I was out cutting hay and I was getting tires and all of a sudden some of those kites flew in.

They was just dying bum in the grasshoppers.

Now, Christopher Joe and his family invite people to witness the hay cuttings

and kite feeding

frenzies for themselves.

Christopher says he intends for Joe Farms to be a place where

black people and all bird watchers can feel safe and

connect with wildlife.

Nature in general is what a lot of people are looking for in places like this to where they can come and relax.

You can hear more about the Joe Farm and swallow-tailed kites on the threatened

podcast. Listen in your podcast app or at birdnote.org. I'm Ari Daniel.