Bird Watching: Your Favorite Bird Photo of 2011, 1 by thebestmissy

thebestmissy wrote:
There were many birding highlights for me in 2011. It's very hard to pic one favorite, but I have picked one.

This fledgling Mississippi Kite spent a few hours on my back porch on a miserably hot August day. We gave him water and shade and he eventually flew away, but a neighbor let us know that he passed away the next day. In this photo, it looks like he is asking for mercy from above. This could be classified as my heartbreak of the year, but he is just beautiful.