About 5:30PM Sunday afternoon we were able to refind a jaeger off the beach house on Park Point. For the first 20 minutes of observing the bird we were hampered by the extreme distance it was from us, although with near calm water it was fairly easy to observe it continuously. During this time it preened, flapped it's wings, and made short flights without getting any closer to us. We were able to observe the single flash under the wings (white crescent at the base of the primaries), dark back, and dark on the top of the head, with some degree of white on the neck, throat and upper chest.
At this point the bird finally cut the distance to us by about 2/3's and was fairly clear for a short time as it harassed several gulls. It was clearly smaller than the Herring Gulls and we felt that it was about he same size as the Ring-billed Gulls that were is its path. It them pulled away from the shore to a point at the extreme end of our ability to observe it. Then it powered up to a very fast speed and flew right at us and the beach. As we followed to it came to a point several hundred yards yards off to our left and turned parallel to the beach and flew by us at the same fast speed, harassing every gull in its path as it continued to the right, heading toward Minnesota Point. At its closest point it passed about 70 yards off shore, directly out from us standing if front of the beach house! As the gulls on the point never flew we decided that it did not fly as far as the point before we lost sight of it. We were clearly able to observe the dark brownish back and top of the head, with the creamish white area between the back and top of head. There was at least a partial, if not complete light colored breast band. It never turned its pale belly completely toward us for long enough so we were not able the see if the breast band was complete or not. But it clearly had the beginings a what we felt was probably a complete lower chest band. The central tail feathers entended just beyond the tail but in flight we were unable to see the exact shape of them for sure. One of us got one look at seemed to indicaate that they were pointed but it was to brief to be sure. With this plumage this bird was clearly an adult. The power and speed of this bird was rather amazing when compared to the various gulls that were doing their best to avoid it. It literally flew circles around every one of them. No doubt our best and closest look at a feeding Parasitic Jaeger. We did not see a second jaeger and if one had been present that this time I suspect that we would have noticed it as total viewing time was about half an hour. Dennis and Barbara Martin Shorewood, MN [email protected] ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
