After driving around some cow pastures, I saw this up ahead. I pulled over and took the above. It looked liked was raining swallow-tail kites.

I drove a little farther and found a large group of people standing on the side of the road, next to a watermelon field. They were all watching the swallow-tail kites flying around catching the dragonflies in mid-air and eating them while they were flying.

I took all of the above while standing on the side of the road. Some were flying over a melon field and some were flying over the cow pasture next door. I’m sure all of the farmers driving by thought we were all crazy. Standing there taking pictures of birds flying that they see each summer. The kites all stop over in central Florida on their way south for the winter. They fill up on dragonflies and other bugs hanging around the fields. I don’t see these kites often. Only a handful in the Tampa Bay area in the past several years. Once word gets out on the bird forums of the kites eating their summer meals, people come from all across Florida to watch the hundreds of kites.  In a few of the pictures, you can just barely see the kites holding a bug and trying to eat it while flying. I struggled to get decent pictures. The kites were flying so fast, zooming across the fields.

Not a good picture but there were a few Mississippi kites flying around but they stayed pretty far away from the roads. They look smaller than the swallow-tail kites and are almost all gray so they were fairly easy to spot. My husband calls them the ghost birds.