Kites are flying over Baycliff–Mississippi kites, that is.

The unusual visitors are nesting in the depths of a very tall pine tree near Dale Browning’s Baycliff home and she has kept an eagle eye, so to speak, on the birds since she first noted their arrival on May 18. They were building their nest then, she said.

In the photo above, Dale watches her friend Laura Hoots adjust the scope she brought over that day to try and get a close up view of the nest.

Mississippi kites are small hawks, denizens of the south and southwest, and rarely nest farther north. A pair began nesting in Thoroughgood more than a decade ago, though I haven’t heard anything about those birds recently.

But as if luck would have it, not long ago, Tom Langley also sent a video of a Mississippi kite flying overhead and making its characteristic shrieking cry. Tom lives at the end of Little Neck Road and it’s possible that the kite he photographed is one of the Thoroughgood pair across the river. See this quick video:

A Mississippi kite is hard to miss. Dark back and wings and a whitish breast set off a white head with startingly big black eyes.

“She has a beautiful light head,” Dale said of the bird she presumes to be the female.

Though getting clear photos is impossible with a cell phone, she takes pictures and checks on them most days and continues to keep a journal of what she sees and when.

Mississippi kites are small members of the hawk family. Their prey is primarily large insects such as cicadas and grasshoppers. I have read they catch bugs on the wing and dine on them as they are flying.

Just about every day, Dale goes out on her deck, binoculars and cell phone in hand. So far there have been no sign of babies, but the eggs incubate almost a month and then it takes another month for babes to leave the nest.

“I’m wondering if maybe the babies have been born?” She wrote just the other day. “Just now a huge hawk was flying overhead very close and the Mississippi kites started calling and circling and dive bombing close by the hawk!”

But, the wait for news of a blessed event goes on.

In the meantime, is anyone else lucky enough to see Mississippi kites flying round their neighborhood?