Kite Behavior Otero County

[Dan Stringer]

On April 2nd Michael Kiessig I and were observing Black Terns at Holbrook Reservoir, when he found a Mississippi Kite over the water, foraging in the same manner as the terns. Cruising low and catching tiny insects, moving fast, kind of erratic yet graceful…like a Black Tern (which I see feeding on small insects much more often than small fish). It even appeared able to skim the surface, once dipping a wingtip in the water as it turned sideways and shot back up in the air. 

This was the first time I’d seen a kite working so low. In my previous observations of them feeding, they were soaring and gliding fairly high to very high, where their food source was. 

This day was light rain, misty all morning, a bit of fog. It made me wonder if those weather conditions simply prevented the small bugs from being higher in the air, instead almost at ground level / water level. Or if the preferred hatch of the moment was an aquatic insect that emerges and never goes up very far in the air.

This one-off, low-down sighting was a bit surprising to me, and very fun to watch.

Dan Stringer

Larkspur, CO