Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Spring Migration summary

The same sorta skill set in that ya gotta know the habitat and the season.

Anyhoo.... Most Mississippi kites pass here from Central America second half of April, but I saw a few passing over the same morning as the front earlier this week, a line of around fifteen kites all gliding north without a wingbeat nearly directly into the strong north wind and still making progress. I figure only a kite could pull that off. Here's some photos I took behind the school last years, when a northward-bound flock ran out of thermals and came down for the night in a neighborhood near the school. Flat amazing what people can scarcely notice, I think I was the only one who did.





These next two photos are lifted off of the 'net.

Here's what Mississippis look like....



But if there's anything that can make even a Mississippi look like an amateur its a swallow-tailed kite, these pass along the Gulf Coast in the spring, and once in a great while wander through the San Antonio area in late summer/early fall on their way back.



Swallow-tails are mature forest birds, snatching prey off of the foliage and branches with hardly a wingbeat. Originally found across the Deep South in summer they used to breed too up along our major river valleys and in the original tallgrass prairie regions of the Mid West.

Point of interest, the swallow-tailed kite was the "Thunderbird" of the Great Lakes Tribes at least and likely points further East. Swallow-tails could hand in the air four feet above the tall prairie grass and with an almost supernatural ability catch a thermal and ascent high into the air without a single wingbeat, they also commonly hung in the air along fronts and around storm cell, hence the association with thunderstorms. Late summer wanderers in the Colonial Era would make it clear up to Quebec and New England, likely feeding largely on migrating dragonflies.