Mississippi Kite in Bellevue
Thursday evening, I was outside attempting to photograph a male Ruby-throated hummingbird. The hummer was not being cooperative, (it had in fact disappeared completely) and as a result I was left standing in my driveway holding an unwieldy camera and lens combination. Glancing up, I saw a raptor come in low and fast over the trees. My first thought was that it was probably a Sharp-shinned Hawk, although almost immediately, something about it seemed off. I raised my camera just in time to get a blurred silhouette of the back of the bird as it banked back over the trees and out of view.
Fighting the temptation to run inside to get my bird book, I was rewarded a few short moments later when the bird glided back into view. This time I was prepared, and I fired off a series of 5 or 6 quick photos. The bird flew in a few more tight circles just above the treetops before heading in a southerly direction, not to be seen again.
Zooming in on the image, I could tell that neither was this a Sharp-shinned Hawk, nor was it anything else I was familiar with. Right off the bat, the coloration wasn’t correct for any of our typical backyard hawks. (Cooper’s, Sharp-shinned, Red-tailed) The white fading to a light grey was entirely unfamiliar to me, as was the shape of the beak. After waiting for a while in hopes of it returning, I finally deemed it was safe to go inside and grab my Peterson field guide. Flipping to the section titled “Kites,” I quickly found my mystery bird. It was a Mississippi Kite!
The Mississippi Kite is a long distance migrant that spends the winter as far south as southern Brazil, Paraguay, and even northern Argentina! During the summer months, they can be found in the Great Plains regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas; along the Mississippi River as far north as Illinois and southeastern Iowa; and the Deep South portions Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. While they can be commonly found in far western Tennessee with established populations as far east as Jackson, they are uncommon in our part of the state.
Unlike most birds of prey, Mississippi Kite are actually colony nesters in the western portions of their range, sharing nesting sites in small woodland sections of prairie, often the remnants from abandoned homesteads. Also unusual for raptors, nestlings will preen one another and rearrange nest material together. Occasionally, yearling kites will hang around the nest of mated pairs, aiding them in nest protection, egg incubation, and even raising the chicks! For those of you that want to take a deeper dive on these fascinating raptors, I will link to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology page I used for the information in this article here.
