Day 180: June 28th – It’s all about babies

Beautiful sunny, warm (High 80s) breezy day

       I had a date with my oldest grandson to go work on cleaning up out motorboat today and worked in a little birding around that and my golf in the morning.  I went over to my favorite local haunt, the Outdoor Discovery Center in Cornwall with camera in hand to see what was up in the one hour I had in between.  “Babies” is the main theme I’m running into wherever I bird at this time of year.  Today, it was revisiting several broods I’ve seen and photographed before. 

       I checked to see if the young Barn swallows under the garage eaves which I blogged about last week had fledged yet.  The last time I saw them and photographed the nest, I had two little heads peeking up above the nests’ edge.  Today, there were actually four heads which belonged to four chicks which were obviously bigger and stronger than I saw last week.  Fledging cannot be that far away.

       On the pond, I once again ran into the Canada geese with their goslings in tow.  Again, a portrait of a caring family.

       The top sighting of the day, however, has to go to a family in the making.  After working on the boat and taking it out for a trial run, I asked my 14 year old grandson if he would mind if we made a quick detour on the way home to see if the Mississippi kites were around.  The nest site is only about 7 or 8 minutes off the regular route home and I assured him we would not spend too much time waiting for them.  He was more than happy to agree and off we went.

       When we arrived on the property, I was a little disappointed that the birds were not present.  I should not have expected so much inasmuch as we have waited for hours for them to appear in the past.  But, I told Ty to just hang on and showed him which tree to concentrate his observations upon.  In no more than three minutes, Ty said, “Pop Pop, is that the bird we are looking for?”  Sure enough, in came the female and landed on the exact tree I had t pointed out to Ty.  

       I grabbed the scope and trained it upon the female.  Within the minute, the male joined the female side by side.  I grabbed the camera and started shooting.  It was just a matter of time before the male and female were copulating and putting on quite a show.  I hadn’t planned on quite such a graphic first look at the kites for my grandson, but it certainly was a great first look at these magnificient visitors from the south for this 14 year old.  Birding is great, but sharing moments like this with your family is the best.