Figure 1.

The black kites of Delhi depend heavily on human subsidies offered for religious reasons: (a) a man with his sons ritually feeds kites with the typical, compact chunks of red meat (red circle); (b) large numbers of kites, sometimes into the hundreds, may congregate at such feeding events; (c) the ritual offerings are taken to the nests; (d) a parent kite is about to feed its fledgling with a ritual meat chunk. More than 90% of the diet in this population is composed of ritual offerings, which explains the tight link between breeding density and ready access to human cultural subsidies (photo credit for all images: F. Sergio). (Online version in colour.)