White-tailed Kite on the Tuolumne River Bluffs

I had quite a surprise the other day while wandering through my usual haunts along the Tuolumne River in Waterford. I was having a relatively good birding day with more than twenty species sighted, although no new ones were noted. I struggled up the stairway (135 steps; it's a new favorite exercise spot in my town) and got in the car to go home when I noticed a large bird over the fallow cornfield at the north end of the parking lot.

It was white...and it was kiting! Kiting in this case does not involve bouncing checks (a fraud from the earlier non-digital banking days), but instead involves hovering, or gliding in place over a field, waiting for a rodent to make the wrong move. Northern Harriers do this to an extent, but the experts are the White-tailed Kites (Elanus leucurus). They are found in the westernmost states of California, Oregon and Washington, but they are not at all common (Texas hosts a few but most are in Mexico and Central America). I've only seen three of them so far in my travels, and this one was the first I've seen near the Tuolumne River.

The Kite never landed (I wasted about 25 digital images trying to get the few slightly sharp photos seen above), and eventually it flew off to the north. In case you want to know what they look like on the ground, here is a shot I got last November on Milnes Road while commuting to work. I was as surprised as the bird was when I hit the brakes.