Around 6:30 PM on Thursday the 12th, Brooke Goodman discovered a kite hunting at the Miller Ponds area of State Game Lands 214 in Crawford County, which is only about seven miles from the Ohio border. Using her cell phone, she took videos of the bird through her binoculars, which takes a lot of skill. After watching the bird for a while, she was sure that the bird she was seeing was a White-tailed Kite, formerly called a Black-shouldered Kite. A White-tailed Kite had never been documented in Pennsylvania before, so this was a big deal. Jason Horn called Rick Wiltraut and I and asked if we were interested in going for it, and we both said 'yes'. So around 1 AM, we left Jason's house and started the over 5-hour drive to the spot.
At around 6:15 AM, we parked at the Pymatuming Wildlife Management Area parking lot along Route 285. We were surprised that we were the only birders there as we started searching the area. Brooke had posted a photo of the bird in a corn-stubbled field, so I scanned the strip of corn stubble on the south side of the highway with my binoculars. That's when I noticed a thin white vertical spot on the ground in the corn stubble that appeared to have some black in it, but it was a long distance away. I got Jason and Rick on it and scope views confirmed that it was the bird! It eventually perched atop one of the cornstalks where it sat for a long while.
Finally, it took off and thankfully flew past us to the north side of the road where it began "kiting" over the field next to the ponds. "Kiting" is when kites hover in one spot while hunting.
It dove down into the grass, grabbed what appeared to be a young Red-winged Blackbird, and flew back across the road to the same corn-stubbled field where it ripped apart its prey. After that, it sat and preened for another long period.
It eventually took off and made another flight back to the same field next to the ponds.
It continued north where we lost sight of it behind some trees. It apparently circled around while hunting because, after about an hour, it was refound back in the same corn-stubbled field. More birders were now showing up after Jason reported that we refound it. Among them was Brooke, who we got to talk to and hear the story about her historic discovery. It made another flight past us, circled around, revealing its black shoulder patches on the upper side of its wings, and then flew off to the northwest out of sight.
We knew we had a long drive back home, so around 11 AM, we started heading home. I got home around 7:30 PM after traversing the state, covering around 700 miles. I've never been superstitious about Friday the 13th and, in this case, it was our lucky day.
