Sorry for posting without any geographical specifics in the title.  This report 
is for a come-what-may day trip "out east".  Good birds, good weather, good 
birding friends....

John Vanderpoel and I started out early this morning to track down the 
Dunning/Kellner/Lawrence mega-numbers of Wilson's Warblers at Norma's Grove 
(Weld, WCR 100 X 57).  Well today there were a few plus a few Yellow-rumps and 
a starling with a killer Sora imitation.  Cassin's Kingbirds (2) were still 
here (and at least one at Crow Valley and a fourth along WCR 86 between 
Briggsdale and New Raymer), but not a whole lot of other nifty stuff.

On to Crow Valley where the best sightings were....Steve Mlodinow and Nick 
Moore!  Good to catch up, but there seemed to be more cub scouts than birds 
around.  We did have a few birds up the creek to the north beyond the gate.  
There is a little pond out there at which there was lots of activity for us 
(and for Steve and Nick, too) including Green-tailed Towhee, White-throated 
Sparrow, Cedar Waxwing, Townsend's Solitaire, etc.

John and I continued pushing east in order to make a lunch stop at the Pawnee 
Station Restaurant in New Raymer (really worth the visit if you are out that 
way).   At that point John saw Kathy M.D.'s message relayed from David Dowell 
at Jumbo---Jaeger!  We were less than an hour away, so we figured, what the 
hay.  Called David up (we didn't do stuff like this in the '90s) and he said he 
was still on the bird and would keep at it; so off we went.

We got to Jumbo less than an hour later and after a quick Marbled Godwit stop 
found David at the SE campground by the old boat ramp.  "It just flew, but you 
can still see some sort of bird in my scope."  We decided to go back to the 
center point and try our luck there.  Lo and behold we found TWO jaegers and 
after a lot of work pieced together an ID of 2 adult Parasitic Jaegers 
interacting and spending a lot of time together on the water and in the air.   
Both were light morphs and at one point they merged into one bird, in front and 
in back (i.e., exactly the same size).  More capped than hooded, stub tailed, 
single underwing flash and lots of white shafts on the primaries on the upper 
wing.  (See David's pics on his Jumbo-Sedgwick eBird list if you want to look 
at them.)

We got bored eventually and started looking at the terns right in front of us 
2-3 Black, 1 Forster's and 4-5 Common, oh, and at least one, maybe 2 or more 
Sabine's Gulls flying around.  Then David brought us back to jaeger 
reality-there is a THIRD one out there!  We all got on the bird which gave the 
impression of slightly larger; and then one of the first two drove it off (I 
think, we were suffering from TMJS-Too Many Jaegers Syndrome).  We packed up 
and went back to the SE campground and never did make a definitive ID of the 
3rd jaeger (probably another Parasitic), but we did have one fly in so close I 
thought it was going to try to make John throw up his lunch.  Eventually it 
tracked down a Franklin's and bullied that poor gull into giving up its lunch 
instead.

It's days like this that make me wish I didn't have a job (or 4 jobs as I seem 
to have right now).  We lashed ourselves to the mast and headed home while the 
siren of the birds called us to stay.

Bill Kaempfer
Boulder

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