Birding

I was out in our back yard after work yesterday looking for "our" Kites, and came across a pair doing their usual Spring fever dances. I got out my telescope and coupled my camera up to it to see if I could get it adjusted right for some shots. I wound up taking some video of a female Mississippi Kite grooming herself in a tree a couple of houses down the street. Here is the result, not cropped or anything.

(A female Mississippi Kite grooms herself.)

The telescope I used was a 1200mm Maksutov-Cassegrain catadioptric 'scope. A "catadioptric" telescope is a hybrid reflector and refractor telescope. Used with my camera (without eyepieces) it's about 4x as powerful as our biggest camera lenses.

Geronimo!

This Kite played with me over the last week or so, by perching in this tree until I got my camera. He would leave as I came back out with my camera. Today he decided to pose for me for a while. Here he was just leaving. You can see a couple more shots on my bird blog.

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Me? A Bird Brain?

I can't help it. I have a great fondness and respect for these raptors. To me, they have the qualities of a miniature eagle. Proud, graceful, and strong predators. When they hunt, they remind me of Peregrine Falcons as they dive after their quarry. This is one of the few species that eat on the wing.

This guy was nice enough to pose for me while I did an impromptu photo shoot - with him as the subject. No, I really don't know if this is a male or female. The female has very similar colors to the male, but is slightly "duller" - if grey isn't "dull" enough already. ;)

See more of my Mississippi Kite photos and information HERE.

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Bad Hair Day

Storms passed through today, and at one point a wall of water raced us to the front door. We had just returned home from shopping. As it rained, visibility was close to zero for a bit. The street in front of our house was flooded over the crown and the water was working its way up our driveway. It slopes to about 6-10" above the curb. After it pretty much passed and gave us a little break, I saw this Kite land in our elm tree. It obviously got caught in the rain. Talk about a bad hair day!



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