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Item Ecology of black kites Milvus migrans subsisting on urban resources in Delhi: Black kite Project Phase - III(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2008) Kumar, N.; Gupta, U.; Malhotra, H.; Jhala, Y.V.; Sergio, F.; Gosler, A.; Qureshi, Q.The research team working in the National Capital territory, since December 2012, and through major funding support from the Raptor Research and Conservation Foundation (RRCF), envisioned a long collaborative term study around the urban adaptations of a large raptor, the Black Kite Milvus migrans. Supervised since its inception by Profs. Y. V. Jhala and Q. Qureshi from the Wildlife Institute of India, and Dr. F. Sergio of CSIC, Spain, this project is a unique attempt in the Sub-Continent to holistically unravel the adaptations around Black Kite’s densest urban settlement in the world. We have now established how human cultural practices and attitudes may well be the most defining dimensions of the urban niche of synanthropes like Black Kites (Kumar et al. 2018). Thus, the third phase (August 2016 – July 2018), was a comprehensive assessment of the breeding ecology of Black kites, and their aggressive interaction with residents along the sampled urban gradient within the megacity of Delhi. For this, we used the habitat selection criteria of kites (Kumar et al. 2018) and inspected the behaviour of breeding kites at 101 territories (total 657 visitations), and tested their offspring defence (Kumar et al. in review). We found that defence increases with proximity to ritual-feeding sites and availability of offal, apart from progression in the breeding stage. This period also included the beginning of Phase -IV, an attempt to understand the migration of the Milvus migrans lineatus, the subspecies from the Central Asian Steppes wintering in the urban quarters of the Subcontinent from September to April every year. We deployed 13 GSM e-obs tags and 5 GSM tags from Microwave Telemetry Ltd. USA. These efforts were preceded by Phase-I of the project (December 2012 – June 2014) that focused on basic natural history observations (Kumar et al. 2014), and the Phase-II (July 2014 – July 2016) which further extended the efforts to cover more sampling units, focusing on the aspects of habitat, behaviour and population ecology. The project has now entered its intensive publication stage, as substantial data have now accumulated to enable high-level publications on international scientific outlets, with three publications lined up and ready to enter the genetic and disease components, apart from movement ecology. Finally, the project has incorporated through these initial years: (1) a remarkable amount of environmental education of Delhi citizens; (2) the Master thesis and near -completion of a PhD thesis by N. Kumar at an institute of repute (Oxford University, Department of Zoology, Edward Grey Institute of Ornithology); (3) completion of a Master program by U. Gupta at the Department of Geography of Oxford University; (4) training of more than 100 volunteers and some of them joining institutes of national and international reputation. All in all, the overall research team is extremely satisfied of all the progress and research formation attained and eager to move on to expand and intensify the project even more.