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Hello and welcome to the American Birding podcast from the American Birding Association.

I am your host, Nate Swick, and I am out of town.

This week, I'm on vacation with my family.

When this episode is released, perhaps even while you're listening to it, I'm at the

beach in South Carolina, hopefully having some time to visit a local wildlife refuge, Pinkney Island,

if you're keeping track, and enjoying the trickle of early season migrants heading back north,

some of which are some of our southeastern specialties. They always seem to be among the

first to get here. I always

sort the birds that are associated with this part of the world, and by that I mean the birds

that birders from other parts of the world want to see when they visit into two kind of broad

categories. There are the habitat specialists, your long-leaf pine birds like Bachman's

sparrow or red cockated Woodpecker or your cane break

birds like Swainson's Warbler. I don't expect to see those this week, though. Maybe if I made an

effort, I might be able to. And then there are those that are more generalized, but still kind of

tied to the southeast, or at least are more abundant here than they are in other parts of the world.

Brothers like painted bunting. And the bird I'm actually most stoked about touching base with, again, Mississippi kite.

For my money, one of North America's truly great birds.

I still remember my very first Mississippi kite.

It was not in the southeast, interestingly enough, but it was in central Kansas where they

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