New member to the list, I joined to get help identifying a bird(s) I witnessed in Lansing.
I was hoping to find out more about what type of bird that I saw yesterday, and also a few years ago, both here in Lansing. I enjoy birds very much, and I am no expert, but am familiar with the local types. The sighting a few years ago happened when I was standing in my front yard and saw a large dark colored bird flying in my direction. We have an open area here and can see all the way from our house, which is about a mile from Myers Point, straight down the lake to Ithaca. This bird was flying about 75 to 100 feet in the air and flew directly over me heading North. The first thing that amazed me was the size as it had a huge wingspan. The two other features that I observed is that the wings were gull shaped, and it had a long forked tail trailing. At the time I had never heard of a Frigate bird, but after looking through some guides it seemed to be the only one that matched what I saw. Yesterday, (June 23), I was inside my house and was looking out the 2nd floor window and saw a very large bird fly past (up higher in the sky). I ran outside to get a better look and saw the same long tail, huge size. The other features I was able to see on this bird was a light patch on it's chest (the rest of the bird was dark colored), and the shape of the beak. Looking at pictures in one of my bird guides, it matched a female Frigate bird in the chest patch I saw, as well as the beak shape. It also had the gull wing shape and flew from West to East. My question is that, as I've been told it's unlikely that these were Frigate birds, what were they? I would appreciate any ideas. In both cases I had a very good look at the birds. The wing shape was definitely a gull wing shape, the wingspan was huge. They both had trailing tail feathers, with the first sighting a definite fork to the tail, the recent one seemed to have the tail feathers together. In both sightings the birds were moving pretty fast, no gliding, just constant wing pumping and flew on a straight line. As I mentioned, I'm by no means an expert, but I do know what Herons, Eagles, Turkey Vultures, etc. look like, and these birds were definitely out of the ordinary. Thanks in advance for your help! Dave -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
