2/11/2024 0 Comments All about birds mississippi kiteAdults add greenery throughout the season. The nest, built by both sexes, is a rather flimsy platform of dead twigs, lined with green leaves. Nesting tends to be in loose colonies, with the site in a tree usually near the edge of woodlot 20 to 35 feet above ground, although it can be up to 140 feet. The tail is fairly long and square-tipped. In size, they’re between a crow and a goose and have long, pointed wings. Juveniles are streaky, with brownish chests and underwings, and have banded tails. The coloration of this bird is a mix of gray and black, becoming pale gray-white on the head and in the secondaries of the wings. Except during migration, you’re unlikely to see one in metro Atlanta. In the winter they take off for the interior of South America. During the breeding season they are most common in southern South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama and on the Great Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It won’t turn up its beak at road-kill either.ĭespite the name, they aren’t particularly associated with the state of Mississippi or the Mississippi River. Major items in the diet include cicadas, grasshoppers, katydids, beetles, and dragonflies it also eats moths and bees, and lesser numbers of frogs, toads, snakes, bats, rodents, small birds, and turtles. It can also skim low to catch prey on or near the ground. When this bird isn’t flying just for fun, it can catch large flying insects high in the air, often holding them with one foot and eating them while on the wing. The printed page cannot adequately describe the aerial maneuvers these birds can perform, but if you’d like to see for yourself, search “Mississippi Kite Barrel Roll” on YouTube for a demonstration. ![]() If they were military pilots, they might be the Blue Angels. If Mississippi Kites were circus performers, they might be the Flying Wallendas. By Steve Phenicie, Georgia Audubon member
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