Mississippi Kite

I think that I finally got the ID correct on this bird as Mississippi Kite. A pair of them show up frequently in the neighborhood and have a favorite tree with some dead branches at the top. When hunting from the air, they fly slow tight circles and then dive like a rock when they spot prey.

I have been processing a lot of images lately with a trial download of Photoshop CS5 and comparing the results with CS3. I am still undecided, but ACR 6.1 is incredible. My only complaint is that it does not include a profile for my favorite lens, the Canon 400/5.6L. I can tell that I need a computer with more horsepower even though the one that I have now is no slouch.

This image is a cropped 25% scale of the original.

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Bill, that is one beautiful bird. I saw one in Palo Duro Canyon a few years ago. Wish we had some nearby. Nice work.

Wow, what a beautiful bird. Nicely captured.

Lovely shot!

That's a great looking bird, I've never seen one myself. Very nice shot Bill!

Beautiful shot

sparker1 wrote in post #10681431
Bill, that is one beautiful bird. I saw one in Palo Duro Canyon a few years ago. Wish we had some nearby. Nice work.

Thanks, Stan. I feel very fortunate that we have such a large variety of birds that I can see without even leaving my yard. The one that has eluded me so far is the roadrunner -- they like to show up when I don't have a camera handy.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #10681507
Wow, what a beautiful bird. Nicely captured.

Thanks, Levina. They are not only beautiful, but very graceful when hunting. They seem to often work together in pairs or even groups to confuse their prey.

jgrussell wrote in post #10681921
Lovely shot!

Thank you, Judy.

ajosteve wrote in post #10681940
That's a great looking bird, I've never seen one myself. Very nice shot Bill!

Thanks, Steve. They seem to be a recent arrival in this area or maybe I just never noticed them before. I know that there are several other species that are showing up more frequently here such as whitewing doves and cedar waxwings.

akhan wrote in post #10682111
Beautiful shot

Thank you, akhan.

beautiful shot Bill! Great Shooting!

Great photo, nice pose.

Wow what a beauty Bill. Great work.

A friend of mine has an adult and juvi hanging around his home about 3 hours from here. I've been tempted to make a road trip.

Wow, Awesome Capture!!

Great Pic! I was walking in one of my favorite birding areas and the trees exploded above me! There were 6 of them in the tree. I watched them for several hours and you are correct. They are very graceful hunters. They returned to the same 2 trees and I got some decent shots but they were too far to close ups. Nice Job!

Beautiful bird, nice one Bill, great work.

Nice to see one this close Bill... that big crop held up very nicely.

We had a small group of them capturing large insects here one afternoon a few months ago, and their aerobatics (especially those steep dives) were sensational. Sadly, we've not seen any since.

good shot,

Kenn

BGgraphy wrote in post #10684072
beautiful shot Bill! Great Shooting!

Thank you, Bret.

cool breeze wrote in post #10684105
Great photo, nice pose.

Thank you, Will.

Nighthound wrote in post #10684107
Wow what a beauty Bill. Great work.

A friend of mine has an adult and juvi hanging around his home about 3 hours from here. I've been tempted to make a road trip.

Thank you, Steve. It is always good to visit friends, especially if they have some nice birds to photograph.

hTr wrote in post #10684130
Wow, Awesome Capture!!

Thanks, Gary. After seeing many of your spectacular eagle images, that is a really great compliment. I am in birding heaven with my 7D and 400/5.6L lens. Using 100% crops is not a problem with this combination. I don't remember the exact shooting distance, but it was somewhere around 75 feet.

bbarnett51 wrote in post #10684176
Great Pic! I was walking in one of my favorite birding areas and the trees exploded above me! There were 6 of them in the tree. I watched them for several hours and you are correct. They are very graceful hunters. They returned to the same 2 trees and I got some decent shots but they were too far to close ups. Nice Job!

That sounds like it was quite a nice birding opportunity, bbarnett51.

Inse wrote in post #10684274
Beautiful bird, nice one Bill, great work.

Thank you, Ray.

kenn3d wrote in post #10684895
Nice to see one this close Bill... that big crop held up very nicely.

We had a small group of them capturing large insects here one afternoon a few months ago, and their aerobatics (especially those steep dives) were sensational. Sadly, we've not seen any since.

good shot,

Kenn

Thank you, Kenn. I know that it was fun watching them. If you look closely at the image above, you will see a bit of down or fur on one of the claws of the left foot. He had just finished eating dinner when I shot this image, but I couldn't determine what it was that he had.

Actually, that image above was reduced to 25% of original scale and then cropped to remove a lot of blue sky and dead branches. Here is a 100% head and shoulders portrait crop from the same image of the kite. I sort of hated to shrink it down so much because a lot of detail was lost in the process.

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