This morning, almost the same time as yesterday, two or three Mississippi Kites appeared again \u2013 and that\u2019s how it seems. One minute the bright blue sky with big white clouds looks empty. The next, there are small dark birds with a slim, distinctive shape and way of flying. Two were soaring very high below the clouds, but the sunlight lit their round white heads and made their long gray wings \u2013 held out flat \u2013 gleam like pewter. Today they were not swooping up and down as they did yesterday, they were gliding in big, easy circles and climbing higher. After they passed out of sight to the southwest, another Mississippi Kite \u2013 or maybe one of the first two \u2013 flew back toward the northeast, still very high.<\/p>\n
Mississippi Kites are often compared with Peregrine Falcons because they are raptors similar in size and shape \u2013 but the kites are much lighter birds, with more buoyant flight. They seem to me to belong to hot summer days. In temperament, they seem like southern birds, with southern ways \u2013 and artists in flight, expressive \u2013 telling stories in the air \u2013 and spellbinding to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning, almost the same time as yesterday, two or three Mississippi Kites appeared again \u2013 and that\u2019s how it seems. One minute the bright blue sky with big white clouds looks empty. The next, there are small dark birds with a slim, distinctive shape and way of flying. Two were soaring very high below […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}