White-tailed Kite at Crex Meadows SWA

I spent a few days in Crex Meadows at the end of June. I went up to try for the White-tailed Kite that had been seen, along with some of the northern butterflies that I won’t get in the Milwaukee area. I attempted to find the kite first. I didn’t see it on my first pass around the pump house, where it was hanging out in a group of tamaracks. I saw some storms headed my way in the distance, so I went looking for butterflies, before the sun disappeared. Once it started raining, I thought I would swing back through and see if it was out yet. I got back over by the tamaracks and to my surprise, there it was! It was sitting lower, about halfway up in a tree and was facing the rain with it’s wings spread out. I sat there for about an hour, waiting out the rain. When it finally stopped, it went up to the top of the tree and was drying off and preening. Then the kite flew across the road and started hunting, hovering over the bog. It went down and came up with something, which looked like a small rodent of some type. It took its catch out to a very small bush in the bog and ate it. Then it flew back across the street to the tamaracks. It always returned to the same one, on the west side of them, that appeared to be broken off at the top. This time it stayed there for about 30 minutes and then flew across the street to hunt again. Within minutes, it caught something and repeated exactly what it did last time. When it flew back over to the tamaracks this time, I took off and went to look for butterflies. I had watched it for several hours and it that was good enough for me. It seemed very comfortable and ate at least two rodents in the time I was there.

I came back the next day and actually kept an eBird list for the day, even though the majority of it was spent chasing butterflies. I ended up with 95 species for the entire day, across about 15 miles of the wildlife area. The White-tailed Kite was in the same tree, every time I looked for it. I was even able to point it out to several other people who didn’t even know about it. I thought that was pretty cool. I spent many hours on Main Dike Rd that day, because the butterflies were insane! I ended up with 39 species of butterfly as well! I will include a link to the butterfly sighting, that shows what species I saw, for those of you that are interested in them. Pictures below are from the couple days I spent up there. Enjoy!

Sighting for June 29 — wisconsinbutterflies.org