Mississippi Kite preys on bird

The distinctive Mississippi Kite is a bird that many out-of-state birders looks for when they visit Oklahoma in the summer. The good news: it's not hard to find one! This kite is a very familiar sight in the skies above Oklahoma City as it soars and catches cicadas. It is a migrant, arriving in late April and leaving in October. And it is quite infamous for protecting its nest by attacking golfers or people walking in parks! All of that is "normal" behavior -- what I observed last week when I found a pair of Mississippi Kites at Lake Hefner was very abnormal. I watched one of the kites eat a bird. This may not sound unusual for a raptor but I learned that my photos of the meal were only the second documented evidence in Oklahoma of a Mississippi Kite preying on a bird. Berlin Heck, a retired wildlife manager and expert on Oklahoma birds, published a report in 2005 about possible incidents of the kites predating other birds and found only one other photo of this happening. It's uncertain why a bird that is known to eat only insects would change its behavior. I sent my photo to Berlin and he suspects the prey was a fledgling that fell out of the nest and was an appealing target to a kite entering mating season. It makes sense... I wonder, though, if our unusually wet weather has disminished the cicada and grasshopper populations (although other insects are plentiful this year!). I would enjoy hearing from others about normal / abnormal behaviors of this fascinating species!

Update on July 1, 2007: The photo above doesn't show many of the Mississippi Kite's identifying features so I can understand Ridgeline's comments that it might be a White-tailed Kite. I can't easily include photos in comments, so I'm adding some additional information here and another photo to clarify my ID. The photo was taken immediately after the bird finished eating. This photo shows the underside of the kite's wings and tail. They lack the distinctive white plummage with black wrist spots of the White-tailed Kite. I've photographed a white-tailed only once: 2003 at Fort Sill. The top photo also shows that the bird does not have the black shoulder patches of the white-tailed.