Kite diagrams provide a graphical summary of different observations made along a transect. 

A transect is a line placed across part of a habitat, or an entire habitat. This is often done manually with string, rope etc. The quantity of various species can be counted at regular intervals along the transect.

The frequency of the animal/plant/etc is shown by an area on the graph, so potential and hypothesised relationships between different observations can be identified.

For example, the kite diagram below shows how four different species (A, B, C and D) are distributed at points 5m, 10m, 15m and 20m away from a stream. We can see that Species C becomes less prevalent as we move away from the stream while Species B becomes more prevalent.