Most birds we get to see on our own terms; we go out and look for them whenever we feel like it. Some birds require an appointment.
The hook-billed kite is one of those birds that operates on a schedule. If you want to see a hook billed kite, you have to fit your time to their schedule; but they don’t tell you exactly what that schedule is. They change it a little each day. You just have to guess.
We got word that a hook-billed kite leaves the forest at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park each morning and flies over the levee headed north. That’s the viewing point for us; the levee. He had been seen at 9:30 yesterday morning. We didn’t want to miss him this morning, so we showed up at the state park at 8:00am prepared for a two-hour (or more) stakeout waiting for the fly-by. We arrived on the levee at 8:04. The kite flew over at 8:09, gave us a great view circling right overhead, then glided off to the north out of site. That was it; the end of the stakeout. A five-minute stakeout.
The kite is not a hunter that pounces on its prey from the sky. It spends the day climbing around in trees like a parrot, finding little tree snails and eating them.
We’ve done well with rare raptors the last couple days. Judy picked out a zone-tailed hawk soaring high with a kettle of turkey vultures and black vultures riding the morning thermals.
It’s so high we can’t see the markings on his tail but have to identify him by size and silhouette.
Gray hawk. We’ve been seeing brown juveniles.
Then from the car, Judy spotted an adult standing in a tree within 50 feet of us.
Today, we got the hook-billed kite.
This birding thing is so easy…
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