I decided to drive from Kirksville and spend parts of 2 days - Thursday from 3-6pm and Friday 8-10:30am - hoping to see and photograph the reported Swallow-tailed Kite at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area.
On Thursday, I didn’t see any Swallow-tailed Kites and, with the warm temperatures, the approx 6 Mississippi Kites were up pretty high. But there was a flyby of 2 Air Force jets at very low altitude.
This morning on Friday, it was originally foggy, but then cleared into a sunny blue sky, with some clouds.
There were 6-8 Mississippi Kites perched in the dead trees just east of the round parking area off the intersections of pools 10, 11, 14 ands 15. They would occasionally fly out, but then fly back to their perch. I think they were either testing for thermals or catching an insect. As the fog cleared and things started warming, they took off, circling to gain altitude and quickly soared up high.
Around 9am, I spotted 2 Swallow-tailed Kites flying just above the trees towards the south. Then one soared towards me and circled right overhead at fairly low altitude, again gaining altitude before flyng away toward the Missouri River. I didn’t see it after that and left around 10:30am. Pretty cool to get such close looks with good light for photos - pretty fortunate!
