Avid amateur bird watcher Scott Neil made a rare sighting of a swallow-tailed kite yesterday.

Mr Neil reported seeing it while out on a run in the area. He said: “Just saw a swallow-tailed kite at Wyndham Hill, near Harrington Sound — very large and impressive bird of prey usually found in Florida and further south.”

This bird is not a regular visitor to the Island. Bermuda Audubon Society president Andrew Dobson said: “Swallow-tailed kites are not seen annually in Bermuda and so it is always a thrill to see one of these impressive birds of prey.”

News reports say that one was seen two years ago, on Easter Sunday, while several were spotted in 2010.

Mr Dobson said: “Seventeen-year-old student Fiona Dobson first reported one during the gales on February 28, a very early date for this vagrant spring bird.”

He said it must have overshot from the south, and arrived as a result of a frontal weather system that stretched all the way down to Florida and the Caribbean.

“The same date and weather also brought the first two ospreys of the spring. There are now at least two kites in Bermuda with Audubon member Ingela Persson seeing them together over Hamilton Fire Station on February 4.”

He described swallow-tailed kites as “striking black and white birds (which) have an obvious forked tail and a four-foot wingspan.”

The Audubon president added: The most northern breeding populations are in the south-eastern US.

“Their favoured food is lizards, so they can feed well in Bermuda.”