Serendipity rules. Molly had a 10:00 AM swim tournament over in Holland, MI. Over an hour and a half away plus she had to be on deck at 8:00 AM. Luckily she decided to spend the night with another girl and have them take her to the tournament. Another hour and a half of sleep for us. As Molly is heading out word came across the listserve of a jaeger in, hey, Holland State Park. About 15 minutes from where Molly was swimming. No extra hour and a half of sleep for us. We got up early, hightailed it to Holland State Park, found all the heavy duty optical equipment, and “Boom Baby!”, sitting 50 feet away on the beach was a new lifer.
Jaeger watchers.
Jaeger.
Jaegers are oceanic birds. They nest in the arctic tundra and spend most of the winter over the open ocean. Rarely seen from land according to the Sibley guide, but they occasionally show up in the Great Lakes.
This was a tough bird to key out. There are three species of jaegers, long-tailed, Pomeranian, and parasitic. Breeding adults are fairly different the few times they are seen close up. This bird, however, was a dark phase immature. Not so easy to differentiate between the three species. There were some really good birders, with guides specific to skuas and jaegers, examining this bird close by with big optics. We hung to the side, listening to the seasoned veterans that have seen jeagers on the breeding grounds. There was much discussion about the amount of white trim on various primary feather edges and the gonydeal angle of the bill. (Gonydeal is a real word, look it up.). Pictures were being posted on line for comments from those that couldn’t be present. Everything got down to the bird needing to fly so the underside tail edges could be seen. But this bird, believed to be sick or injured, wasn’t going to take off.
The gonydeal angle.
Now the birding ethics come in. Apparently it is unethical to flush a bird to ID it, but it’s OK if someone does the foul deed for you. The bird wasn’t going to move. The general feeling is that the bird is sick or injured. Some people had been there for a couple hours hoping to see it move. But nobody was willing to scare it up. Then along comes some do-gooder school group picking up beach trash. The optical crowd started murmuring about the school group scaring the bird up. But nary a one would warn the school group away. As the group approached the bird everyone popped to their scopes or held cameras at the ready, hoping for the coveted view. The bird flew up giving enough of a view to ID it as a parasitic jaeger, and then drifted in the wind down the beach and across the river. Satisfied, the optical crowd dispersed for breakfast. As Lise and I drifted back to the cars a number of birder laden cars came zipping into the parking lot at high speed, obviously looking for the jaeger. Given the fire in their eyes I thought it safer not to tell them we let a school group scare it up so it could be identified. Some things are best not mentioned.
So now the count stands at 240 (96.0%) for me and 234 (93.6%) for Lise. As of today, 72.3% of the year is over. We need to be getting more than one new species a week.
We’re still beating time but it’s closing in.
Molly did well in the tournament. She knocked 23 seconds off her 500 meter time. That’s 20 laps. One tough cookie.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 