Day 151: May 30th – Kites revisited

Overcast and humid, temps in the low 80s

       When a bird like this Mississippi kite shows up in an area where he has never been seen before, you can be that it will become quite an attraction.  The parking lot at Sterling Forest State Park has not seen this much weekday activity in some years, all due to the appearance of this most handsome bird.

       We arrived around 8:00 AM this morning to see if I could photograph the kite perched rather than in flight.  My passion is photography and my favorite subject is birds in flight, but the last two days, all I could get were the kites on the wing, and I wanted to capture the bird in a more passive state. 

       Things worked out better than hoped for, however, in that when we arrived, the bird was perched fairly close by.  Were it not for the gray skies and muted lighting, it would be the ideal situation.  A white and gray bird against a gray sky leaves something to be desired, but on the other hand, if there is little color to the bird, you’re not losing  that much by photographing him in these conditions.  Even these clouds today had a silver lining.

        It turned out that because of the overcast skies, the insects upon which the kite dines were slow to appear.  With little to hunt, the kite spent a good part of the morning preening and occasionally scouring the countryside for appropriate nesting material.   I managed to capture several images of the Mississippi as it returned to its roosting site in a bare dead tree.  As the bird landed, its talons flared, the wings opened wide to slow the bird down, and in he came for a soft touchdown.  What great opportunities to capture the most alluring images of this bird. 

       We did find its nesting area, although the bird is cautious enough to place it well out of sight and out of harm’s way.  When it landed, we could barely see movement up in the selected tree, but if you did not see the kite landing back there, you would never expect that the next was located there.  Well, it certainly appears that good Lord willing, and barring the undesired intervention of too many nosey people, we may end up with not only the first documented Mississippi kites in Orange County, but also the first kites to breed in the county.  What a great way to start the summer months!