Vermont Rare Bird Reports 2024

Christine Bengtson
Ingrid Bengtson
Carrie Tomczyk owner of The Hub on Darling Ridge Road in Lyndonville
Many others who were biking. One was an "ecobiologist", which is unfamiliar to me. I don't know their names. Nevertheless, they did seem very pleased with the sighting.
Ryan Murphy. A resident of the area who was leading a group on the Kingdom Trails bike network.

Beautiful clear skies some small clouds and light wind.

My eyesight. Not binoculars. Used a Canon EOS R7 18-150

I have seen many Swallow-tailed Kites over 30 years: in Florida, Suriname, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Open fields with mountain biking trails through the fields. Some woods and streams below the field. The kite was spending most of its time over the fields, probably looking for food.

It was soaring languidly as these kites seem to do, over the fields and sometimes over the trees, but mostly over the fields. I made sure to get photos of the bird in context with tail spread, both dorsal and ventral views. I have many other pictures but the three I sent should suffice. I have watched them hunt in South America and the behavior was very similar here. The bird was never at high elevation above me, and I have seen them soaring very high above me in South America, but this one was what I would describe as cautiously confiding. It was moving eventually very slowly northeast over the ridge and out of sight in the half hour time I watched.

No vocalizations whatsoever.

Well, I was actually helping in the parking lot when someone came running to me and said "we saw a bird over here and don't know what it is". So I walked out of the parking lot and saw the bird come into my line of sight and it was obviously a Swallow-tailed Kite, so I said it's I STK and told them it is a very unusual sighting and I wonder what brought it to Vermont. I didn't take anything other than mental notes, since I had no papers, but I had my camera hanging from my neck to take family pictures so used it to get the pictures I have filed with this report. I made to sure to get a variety of photos of the bird up close and in context and I have many more of the bird in different flight configurations since they use their tails so well. I did not check field guides because I am familiar with the bird. The main objective was to get other people to see the bird well, which many did. Some, however, did not look up from their iPhones..a common human behavior in such situations.

Length about 2 feet wingspan about 4 feet Come people thought it was a big seagull.

white smallish bill

smallish bill not heavy feet not hanging or obvious during flight

dark grayblack but a bit of variation in how dark

pictures show the detail no striking contrast

white underneath dark borders dark above

white

very forked

no need to eliminate anything, although like I said above some people thought it was a gull at first, which is apparently why they sent someone running for me because they knew I might have an idea of what they were looking at.

No.