I answered the door a few days ago to find our excited neighbor and his two pre-teen boys: “Can you tell us what kind of bird that is?”
Why, yes, I can!
Pretty neat to see a Swallow-tailed Kite swooping over our neighborhood.
They had been watching the bird off and on all day as it was feeding on dragonflies.
We’ve been seeing a few Swallow-tailed Kites around, including one flying over our house last week, so I wasn’t surprised to spot a group of 10 or 15 circling over one of the marshes this morning.
These raptors feed by snatching insects, often dragonflies, out of the air or off their perch on a tree or reed.
Their flight skills are just amazing and they make full use of their tail and wings to swoop and dive.
A mix of Swallow-tailed Kites, Mississippi Kites, and few terns were working this area.
With an unmistakable silhouette, the Swallow-tailed Kite is an amazingly skilled flyer. From Cornell’s All About Birds: “Rarely flapping their wings, they soar and make tight turns, rotating their tail to steer.”
These images are cropped quite a bit; I didn’t get any close ups, but if you enlarge the photos you can get a bit more detail.
Guaranteed to make your neck hurt they are very cool to watch.
While doing all this acrobatic flying they grab flying insects with their feet:
Then pass the prey to their beak:
On this day an approaching storm and boisterous clouds added to the drama of the scene.
Their territory and numbers have dwindled in the US, and are continuously threatened by habitat loss.
