Many mornings before starting the work day, I head for a quick bird walk. But some days I take a longer walk, and that’s what I did the other day. And as I was nearing the halfway point of the walk, I was saying to myself how few birds were out and about, and how I should just focus on getting my steps in. Naturally, that’s when I noticed something more interesting going on in a little bit of the Santa Margarita Ranch that just into the space between the little town of Garden Farms and the nearby neighborhood of Margarita Farms: a White-tailed Kite!
I first noticed the kite when it displaced a Red-tailed Hawk from a nice perch over a field. I was a bit surprised that the larger bird so readily gave up its spot. Later on, I realized that it probably had seen what I hadn’t yet: there was more than one White-tailed Kite. A family group of smaller, more maneuverable raptors is probably going to win a dispute with a single one, and it probably wasn’t in anyone’s interest to actually fight over a single perch. There are plenty of others available.
I only managed to grab one frame of the interaction, and it’s not very good, but here it is so you know I’m not making it up:
Unfortunately, due to recent foolishness on my part (unzipped backpack’s contents meet concrete driveway, smash!), I’m shooting my old DSLR instead of my newer mirrorless camera. I bought the new camera specifically because I was unsatisfied with the DSLR’s performance on birds in flight. As you can tell from the lack of focus in the image, it’s bit challenging to grab and hold focus with the DSLR. Oh, well. At least I got something!
And as I continued down the trail, I noticed what the hawk had surely seen before me: the kite was not alone! I never managed to grab an image with all three in the same field, but I did get one where two are in reasonable focus and the action looks nice. And I got quite a few shots of lone kites flying nearby. Here’s a little gallery:
And just like that, my non-birdy walk became one of the highlights of the summer.