I was watching a flock of Blue Jays and had followed one through my view finder into a tree. Wait! Those are not Blue Jays.

Much more interesting were these two Mississippi Kites consuming a meal. I had never witnessed this behavior so I continued to photograph even though my vantage point wasn’t great. Interestingly, the Kites weren’t concerned about the Blue Jay, who soon flew off.

You can see how large the Kites are compared to a Blue Jay in the first image.

Taking photographs up into a dense tree poses many challenges: leaves and twigs blocking the view, over exposed sky in the leaf gaps, and too much shade on the subject, to name a few.

I tried a couple of angles, working my way around some shrubbery on the ground.

I did determine from one image not shared here that the food was a small bird.

Up to now I had only seen Kites eat insects, snatched from the sky with their feet. In this last image one of the Kites was grooming and gave me a decent view of one foot.