I always laugh when a birder says that they got an awesome view of the bird. That usually means that the bird was visible for a split second in dense fog while mostly concealed behind leaves and sticks. I was somewhat hesitant about chasing a Mississippi kite because most birder tales end up in disappointment. I chased, found, and photographed the kite and unfortunately, the lighting was not great. As I approached this clearing, the kite landed at the top of a dead tree and I started shooting. I was using manual settings with auto ISO and the initial images were under exposed as I forgot to boost up the EC. After making some adjustments, I was able to get some reasonable images even with the dark lighting.
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Pertinent technical details or techniques: D500 600mm f4 (1/400 sec. at f5.6, ISO 500). Levels, Topaz DeNoise, Enhance feature in Adobe Bridge, crop for comp, Shadows & Highlights, Brightness & Contrast. The kite has a cataract in its right eye which appears as a grey spot in the photo…Jim
Is this a composite?
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@paul_g_wiegman the bird is in the NE corner of the Cherry Hill Nature Preserve. Take the unmarked trail east from Trail 4 and go north when trail reaches a clearing. When you see bluebird boxes on your left and a park bench, you are in the right spot. The kite goes out to catch cicadas and returns to the dead trees to eat its catch. I might head out to there this evening to catch it in better light.
Would you believe it, but that’s exactly where I went twice to listen to cicadas. From the entrance on Cherry Hill Road, we went on the path to the right to where it "T"s. It was in the evening and just stopped to listen then have dinner.
I did get a glimpse of a bird for a split second in dense fog, well, not really fog, but while mostly concealed behind leaves and sticks, but didn’t ID it as a Mississippi kite. I’m back in Pittsburgh now so I won’t get a chance to visit Cherry Hill again for a while. My daughter lives in Ann Arbor and we visit often.
