Images made with a Canon 5Div, 400 DO II lens+1.4x telextender, supported by monopod, aperture priority setting, ISO 400, f6.3 1/2000. A very happy combination of circumstances, as far as I’m concerned. The stock tanks attract dragonflies and the kites feast on them. Large Cottonwood trees grow in parts of the county along the course of the San Pedro River, providing roosting and nesting locations for the kites The area is home to farms and ranches and these often have stock tanks, small man-made ponds installed to water livestock. But, parts of Cochise County are at a somewhat higher elevation than Tucson - meaning that the climate is cooler and wetter there than it is in our community. Mississippi Kites are not desert dwellers and one wouldn’t dream of finding one of these birds in Tucson or its immediate environs. I’m not in love with this next picture (too many twigs, too much clutter) but I wanted to show her in comparison with her mate. Mississippi kites (Ictinia mississippiensis) are small birds of prey graceful in flight, often appearing to float in the air. That’s typical of most raptor species, females ordinarily being larger than males. The female is much bulkier in appearance than the male. The male, shown here, is much smaller than the female, and displays every bit of the subtle beauty that characterizes Mississippi Kites. My friend Ned Harris and I encountered a pair of these birds perching in a tall, dead Cottonwood tree. I discovered the kites featured here in a small hamlet in Arizona’s Cochise County, about 50 miles southeast of Tucson. But, for reasons unknown, a few show up in Arizona each year. As the name implies, this species is ordinarily an inhabitant of the southeastern United States. Only a tiny handful of Mississippi Kites, perhaps a couple of dozen pairs at most, reside in southern Arizona during the hot months. The kites must be able to outfly the dragonflies in order to hunt them, and that’s saying something about their flight skills. These birds actively hunt dragonflies, which are superb fliers in their own right. They are superb fliers, specializing in chasing and catching insects on the wing. Mississippi Kites have streamlined bodies with long wings and very long tails, with the tails slightly notched at their ends. Their pearl and blue-gray plumage is set off by eyes that are a deep amber or ruby red in color. This graceful little falcon-like raptor typically shows up in southern Arizona in late May, just as our weather begins to heat up. The Mississippi Kite is a bird that, to me, symbolizes the end of spring and the beginning of fore summer in southern Arizona. ![]() Thousands of new, high-quality pictures added every day. You may enlarge any image in this blog by clicking on it. Find Juvenile mississippi kite stock images in HD and millions of other royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and vectors in the Shutterstock collection.
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