Red Kite Bird is a large raptor with a distinctive flight silhouette, it has long, fairly narrow wings, held rather loosely in a slightly bowed fashion or with deep elastic wingbeats. Red Kite Bird's tail, deeply forked, long auburn-red to buffy-brown with black corners, is twisted and tilted like a rudder when hunting and foraging. While looking for prey it slowly circles and hangs in the wind, its head facing ground-wards. The body of Red Kite Bird is a rich rufous-orange boldly striated with black, while the head is whitish-grey. The mantle is a black-streaked rufous-brown, and in flight the upperwing shows blackish-brown flight feathers and a paler buffy panel across the wing coverts. The underwing is strikingly patterned with black wingtips and blackish secondaries, a large whitish patch on the inner and middle primaries, rusty underwing coverts and a blackish band along the tips of the coverts forming a prominent bar.
Red Kite Bird Nests in trees in deciduous woodland, and can be found around woods and copses by open country in lowlands and hills below 600m, though Red Kite Bird avoids dense forest. It can frequently be seen over open country, as it forages for carrion, its main source of food, though it will also hunt small prey. In Britain it has been reintroduced to many former areas of occurrence.
Red Kite Bird is generally not very vocal, but the main contact call is a mewing "wheee-oo" or a repeated "wee'wee'wee", sometimes extended into a rather tremulous "weee-oo'oo'oo'oo", sounding somewhere between Buzzard and Black Kite in quality. Also gives a longer, high whinnying whistle, a rising and falling "peee-ooo-weeoo-weeoo-weeoo" or "eee-oooo-eee-oooo-eee-oooo", and a plaintive "oo-eeeer". If disturbed at the nest or alarmed in other situations, it will call with a repeated "peee-ee-ee-ee".