Swallow-tailed Kite

• A swallow-tailed kite chose to fly over my house today. I had been seeing Mississippi kites all summer but this was my first local sighting of a swallow-tailed. One of the neighbors had described one to me a couple of weeks ago and here he (or she) was. I ran inside to get the camera thinking that it would be gone by the time that I got set up but it was still close enough that I got these two shots.

Birds of North America states about these birds: "With its striking black and white plumage, deeply forked tail, and extraordinary aerial grace, the Swallow-tailed Kite is rarely misidentified as it courses low over the treetops in search of small vertebrates or twists and dives in pursuit of flying insects."