After work on Tuesday, September 1, Carrie and I drove to Champaign, IL to look for the Swallow-tailed Kite that had been reported there. We drove to Kenny Ave. off of S Mattis Dr. from where the bird had been seen hunting insects over a cornfield. It had also been seen in bare tree branches perched on a tree just off of Kenny Ave. There we ran into Phil Doncheck and several other birders who were also waiting to see the bird. We did see an Osprey fly by, but the kite never showed up.
Since many of the students at Salem were going on a field trip on Thursday morning, I decided to work later hours on Thursday and drive to Champaign in the morning again to make another attempt at seeing the kite. The kite had consistently been seen in the morning and early afternoon, but not in the evening. Based on the previous sightings and the reports that were written, I knew my best chance to see it would be between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. So I arrived just before 8:00 and went to the large conifer on the North side of Windsor, just East of Matthis where it had previously perched, where I ran into Ted Wolff, who was waiting across the street from the conifer. Other birders showed up including Fran Morel. A Cooper's Hawk landed in the conifer, while we were waiting.
By about 8:45 a.m., I was thinking the bird was somewhere else so I left and started driving around the corn fields nearby. I wasn't far down the road when Ted Wolff called me and said, "Get your #$%#$ back over here. The Kite is in the tree." When I drove back to the North side of the road where I had parked, the kite was not in the tree, but when I parked and got out of the car, I saw the kite flying from the North back into the tree, where it remained until it was chased away by a crow.
I was able to take one decent photo of the kite in flight.
The kite hunted in the corn field to the South of Windsor, but eventually it returned again to the tree.
Someone noticed another hawk perched in a tree behind it and thought it was a Cooper's Hawk. I looked at it through my binoculars and said, "That's not a Cooper's Hawk!" After eliminating Red-tailed Hawk and Red-shouldered Hawk, we concluded that it was a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk. The bird took off and flew over us, further confirming our conclusion, just after I took these quick photos.
I took a few more photos of the kite, and then I decided to go to Kaufman Park in Campaign to look for the Yellow-crowned Night-Herons that had been reported there.
When I arrived at Kaufman Park and parked, two Yellow-crowned Night-Herons were sitting right in front of me on the other side of the pond. One of them had it's primaries lifted toward heaven as if it was worshiping the Creator.
