[1] In O.E. is _cýta_; no related word appears in cognate languages.
Glede, cognate with "glide," is also another English name.
[2] George, third earl of Orford, died in 1791, and Colonel Thornton,
who with him had been the latest follower of this highest branch of
the art of falconry, broke up his hawking establishment not many
years after. There is no evidence that the pursuit of the kite was in
England or any other country reserved to kings or privileged persons,
but the taking of it was quite beyond the powers of the ordinary
trained falcons, and in older days practically became limited to
those of the sovereign. Hence the kite had attached to it, especially
in France, the epithet of "royal," which has still survived in the
specific appellation of _regalis_ applied to it by many
ornithologists. The scandalous work of Sir Antony Weldon (_Court and
Character of King James_, p. 104) bears witness to the excellence of
the kite as a quarry in an amusing story of the "British Solomon,"
whose master-falconer, Sir Thomas Monson, being determined to outdo
the performance of the French king's falconer, who, when sent to
England to show sport, "could not kill one kite, ours being more
magnanimous than the French kite," at last succeeded, after an outlay
of £1000, in getting a cast of hawks that took nine kites
running--"never missed one." On the strength of this, James was
induced to witness a flight at Royston, "but the kite went to such a
mountee as all the field lost sight of kite and hawke and all, and
neither kite nor hawke were either seen or heard of to this present."
[3] Thus justifying the advice of Shakespeare's Autolycus (_Winter's
Tale_, iv. 3)--"When the kite builds, look to lesser linen"--very
necessary in the case of the laundresses in olden time, when the bird
commonly frequented their drying-grounds.
[4] Dr R. Bowdler Sharpe (_Cat. Birds Brit. Mus._ i. 322) calls it
_M. korschun_, but the figure of S. G. Gmelin's _Accipiter Korschun_,
whence the name is taken, unquestionably represents the moor-buzzard
(_Circus aeruginosus_).
[5] The Brahminy kite of India, _Haliastur Indus_, seems to be rather
a fishing eagle.