As High as a Kite

The St. Louis birding community had quite a treat in late August and early September of this year. At Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, soaring among literally dozens of Mississippi Kites were a few Kites not like the others. Three Swallow-tailed Kites, a species that is most often found in southern-Atlantic and gulf coast states of the U.S., were visiting the area taking advantage of the abundant grasshoppers, dragonflies and annual cicadas in the skies above the grasslands and woods of the confluence area.

I was naive to the feeding habits of these large birds. In my limited experience with this species in states like Georgia and Texas, I had observed them feeding on larger vertebrate prey like snakes, lizards and small birds. Like their smaller relatives, the Mississippi Kite, this species primarily consumes larger flying insects like cicadas. During my three days of chasing these three birds, I found them eating mostly large grasshoppers.

Photographing these birds was unexpectedly frustrating for me and my friends. On the days we were there, the birds did not take to the air until temperatures were sufficiently high to have their insect prey in flight. This meant that we saw them mostly in the hours between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm when light was not ideal and heat distortion in the air would brought us severe frustrations. Although we often found the birds soaring fairly close over our heads, the heat distortion rendered most of our images with disappointing softness. Most of the thousands of images we took were destined for the recycle bins.

As I mentioned above, Mississippi Kites were found in abundance as well. They must have had a great nesting season as most of the birds I observed seemed to be juveniles. Here are a few of the images I was able to get of these guys.

This seems to have been an unprecedented year for Swallow-tailed Kites in Missouri. In addition to the three I mentioned here, birds of this species were found in other counties across the state. Hopefully this might be another species that we see more often in the future.