{"id":39478,"date":"2025-07-26T23:35:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T03:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=39478"},"modified":"2025-07-26T23:35:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T03:35:23","slug":"a-wee-bit-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/07\/a-wee-bit-closer\/","title":{"rendered":"A wee bit closer"},"content":{"rendered":"

After confirming<\/a> that we had Mississippi kites (Ictinia mississippiensis<\/em>) 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.<\/p>\n

\"Mississippi
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<\/em> have been facing more into the light, but this is what we have for now.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.) So I have just one frame where it wasn’t facing directly away from the camera as it chattered.<\/p>\n

\"Mississippi
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[8082,8081],"class_list":["post-39478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-ictinia-mississippiensis","tag-mississippi-kite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}