White Tailed Kites - A Family Affair

Perhaps you have seen birds fluttering in one place in the air. I have seen Northern Harriers do this as well as kestrels. But most commonly it is the white-tailed Kite. Three years ago there was a family of them in the Laguna De Santa Rosa and I had the privilege of witnessing their behaviors and capturing some of it with my camera. This first picture (above) shows a juvenile in flight and an adult on the branch. The juveniles are distinguishable by the brown markings. This Kite family had three juveniles and one adult, perhaps two adults but I only saw one at any given time.

Late one evening I saw this scene with the adult holding a gopher or vole while the three juveniles gathered.

I was particularly taken by the orientation of the juvenile's body on the bottom left. As it turned out I got several shots of juveniles in unusual positions. On one occasion I photographed one of the juveniles doing a somersault in mid air (topic of an earlier post).

Now this picture above and the one below are particularly noteworthy. Above you can see the adult with the prey in its talons with all the juveniles approaching. In the below picture the prey is missing. The second image was taken approximately one second after the first (according to my camera's readout)

I believe this is a demonstration of the importance of the family unit for wild life as I think the adult is teaching the juveniles how to hunt. She drops the prey in anticipation the youngsters will go after it. I saw this pattern with foxes, where the vixen would at first bring prey to the kits already killed. They would also stash the prey for the kits to find. But as they matured the vixen would bring them live prey in preparation for teaching them to hunt for themselves. I suspect this kite is doing a similar service for her young. Within a week of these pictures being taken, you could see the juveniles in the hunting mode, stationary in the air looking down.

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Aurora Borealis - May 10, 2024, Last Installment.

On Friday afternoon, May 10, 2024, Jan and I were getting coffee in a very small somewhat crowded coffee shop in downtown Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We overheard people talking about the Northern Lights showing up that night. And thus began one of the most exciting nights of photography in my life. If you have read my three previous blog posts you have seen some of the spectacular color displays we were able to capture. In these images I have included some foreground information to put the color displays in perspective. The picture above was taken to the northeast of the Trumpeter property where they house the pygmy goats and alpacas. Looking to the northwest you can see the moon low on the horizon. The building shown here has an additional suite that is separate from the main B&B house.. This image is looking due east showin the stable for the animals. Another view to the east showing the building with the separate ...

The Aurora Borealis, May 10, 2024

This last May, my wife, Jan, and I were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, WA. We were there for a week staying at the Trumpeter Inn, a B&B on San Juan Island. Mid way through our stay we heard there was to be a Northern Lights display and that we would likely be able to see it since we were at a latitude just north of Victoria, BC. The excitement was immediate. The conditions were just right as the sky was cloudless and the moon was in its crescent phase and would be low on the horizon (and therefore not overly bright) during the expected good viewing time between 10 pm and 2 am. The image above was taken that night and is what I was expecting to see, a green Aurora. Little did we know what was to come! Early on the was the first hint that something special was about to happen as color in addition to green began to show. I found this very exciting as I had seen green auroras before but never one with the purple/blue colors an...

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