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Bible Dictionaries
Kite
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or 'ayyah (Leviticus 11:14). The red kite, Μilvus regalis , remarkable for its sharp sight (Job 28:7, where for "vulture" translated "kite," 'ayyah even its eye fails to penetrate the miner's hidden "path"; Deuteronomy 14:13). From an Arabic root "to turn," the kite sailing in circles guided by the rudder-like tail. The phrase "after its kind" implies that a genus or class of birds, not merely one individual, is meant. The bony orbits of the eye and the eye itself are especially large in proportion to the skull, in all the Raptores. The sclerotic plates enclose the eye as in a hoop, in the form of a goblet with a trumpet rim; by this the eye becomes a self-adjusting telescope to discern near or far objects. Hence, when a beast dies in a wilderness, in a very short time kites and vultures, invisible before to man, swoop in spiral circles from all quarters toward it.
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Kite'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/k/kite.html. 1949.
