In Dare County, swallow-tailed kites are relatively rare. They show up from time to time, usually in transit from about now through the early summer. Sitings seems to fade by August. Some years no swallow-tails are recorded, although I suspect somewhere in Dare County they appear each and every year.
Click on the photo for a much larger image where you can see the birds coloring and swallow-tail quite easily.
I caught this one, my first ever Dare sighting this afternoon around 2:30. The bird flew right over my car on Colington Road about 25 ft. up. By the time I found a place to turn around on this curvy two-lane road and backtracked, he was still hawking insects but gaining altitude on a thermal. When I finally got the camera and changed lenses to a 300mm telephoto, he had climbed considerably and almost out of site. This shot was the only one I got before he headed south and out of sight.
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