After breakfast, I noticed there was a fat Robin, Turdus migratorius, sitting on the fence in the backyard, so I ran to get my camera and got some photos of her. Then I could hear the neighborhood magpies fussing over something, so I looked around and saw a bird sitting in the top of a tree about a block away. It was shaped like a raptor, but I couldn’t identify it because it was backlit.

So, I opened the iris on my camera as much as I could and zoomed in on it. It was a White-Tailed Kite (!), Elanus leucurus, having its breakfast. Whatever it was eating looked pretty dark, so I assumed it was a mole or a vole (rather than a rat or someone’s Chihuahua). Because of the distance, the photos and videos of the Kite are grainy, but you can still see what it is and what’s going on.  Cool!

CLICK HERE for the album of photos and video snippets.