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Mississippi kite hawk11/30/2023 ![]() I don’t know if a dragonfly or cicada also loses sight of kites, but the rate at which these flying little critters wind up on the all-you-can-eat buffet at Mississippi Kite Diner tells me they probably do. You’ll be watching one dive and float, and then the bird seems to inexplicably disappear like a ghost, or like Joss Whedon’s “Firefly,” only to reappear from nothing. The combination of slaty blue-gray and pale allow the birds to virtually disappear when seen from a side profile in a blue sky, with or without clouds. Generally, the adults are slaty blue-gray above and below with dark wing tips and tails, pale heads, and pale secondary feathers which are the inner flight feathers of their wings. Mississippi Kites have a special kind of camouflage. There’s just one trick to finding a Kite. Unless it’s raining, then you should go inside. Or find a neighborhood or small town with lots of full, fluffy oak trees and a few old dead snags. Find a farmer cutting a hay field and just look up. They may pass as low as your face, and you’ll soon become nearly dizzy trying to count numbers.īut you don’t have to wait until August to see kites. ![]() Despite the name, it is most common on the southern Great Plains. Thirty or forty can constantly zoom in and out of dragonfly swarms like dogfighting jets. Mississippi Kites are a major success story in North Carolina and elsewhere in their breeding range, which has been expanding northward not only along the East. Mississippi Kite Ictinia mississippiensis One of our most graceful fliers, this kite glides, circles, and swoops in pursuit of large flying insects. I have often looked up over a field on a hot August day and noticed two or three kites, only to stop and watch and soon realize there are many more. It only takes about a month for all the Mississippi Kites in North America to leave, attributed to their very fuel-efficient diet of, mostly, locally-grown flying insects. The only activity more impressive when it comes to Mississippi Kites happens in July and August after all the immatures have left their nests, and swarms of Kites of all ages descend on hovering hordes of dragonflies so they can bulk up for their impending southern migration, which starts about mid-August. ![]() ![]() Once they snag prey from the air, they proceed almost immediately to eat while still on the wing, as if the sky is nothing but a Taco Bell drive-through. All that’s missing are the machine guns and air-to-air missiles. They might hunt with almost no visible effort, or they may dive and invert and roll, convincing you they’re having fun while doing it. Mississippi Kites are like F-16s in the air they’re fast, acrobatic, and buoyant. But if you happen to own cicadas, grasshoppers, or dragonflies, I have very upsetting news. ![]()
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