After confirming that we had Mississippi kites (Ictinia mississippiensis) living in the immediate area, and strongly suspecting that they’d raised a brood within a few hundred meters, we’ve been seeing them off and on, mostly wheeling overhead – the few times I’ve seen them perched, they didn’t remain long enough for me to get any photos of them. Until this afternoon, anyway.
A pair were hanging out and talking to one another, and one perched a couple of times on a dead tree within easy sight. The first time around, the bird flew off as I was trying to clear the condensation from the long lens, since it hadn’t been ‘primed’ by leaving it in a warmer location just so it wouldn’t do that – it’s been stifling hot and humid here, like most of the east coast, and lenses left indoors where the air conditioner could maintain a living temperature will of course fog up immediately upon hitting the outside air. But I left the camera nearby as I tackled a few tasks, and a short while later a kite regained the dead tree and I was able to fire off a few frames. The exposure compensation is set to +1 full stop, accounting for the brighter sky, and this is a pretty accurate rendition of what could be seen. Now, the bird could have been facing more into the light, but this is what we have for now.
It was also talking up a storm, and I wish I’d been prepared for video to record it, but you wouldn’t want to see what handheld long lens work looks like (or maybe you do.) So I have just one frame where it wasn’t facing directly away from the camera as it chattered.
At some point in the future, I hope to feature at least the recording of their calls, but I’ve never heard them calling at all when flying, only when perched, and that’s relatively rare – we’ll see what happens. It’s cool to see them remaining in the area at least.