ML163256131

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Yakima County First. Mary & I found this Parasitic Jaeger at Rimrock Lake Saturday morning, September 28, 2013. Life bird. Yakima County first. Neither of us had ever seen a jaeger before, nor knew what one looked like. It is a light non-breeding adult. It took us a little while to settle on the identification. Flying, the central tail feathers are a bit longer than the others, protruding distinctly. White showed on the wing primaries' dorsal surface. White triangles in the underside of the wings' primaries are prominent, ruling out Long-tailed Jaeger, which have dark underwings. The bill is not two toned, and the dark brown hood doesn't come down under the bill, as in Pomerine Jaeger. There is a bit of what appears to be loose or shedding keratin on the top of the upper mandible. The jaeger was noticeably smaller than California Gulls, one of which harassed it. I'd thought the other way around more likely. Mike & Alice Roper arrived soon after and joined us in watching it, along with an adult Sabine's Gull. I phoned Richard Repp and asked him to share the news. "One was harassing terns on the Columbia R., 7 miles s. of Beverly, Wash., June 3, 1979 and possibly the same one was over Lenise L., 3-4 m e. of Beverly June 21 (NW)." -- American Birds, Volume 33, Issue 6 (November) 1979, Page 882 -- Continental Survery, The Nesting Season June 1 - July 31, 1979. (NW) is Norbert Wolffe, per that article. "7 miles s. of Beverly" is a location in GRANT County, on land in Mattawa, 1.8 miles EAST of the Columbia River. A. Stepniewski, in his book "The Birds of Yakima County, Washington", entry for Parasitic Jaeger, page 116, has minor errors in his quote, but also wrongly describes that as if it were Yakima County. There is a very large inlet on the east, GRANT County, side of the Columbia River there where there is often a concentration of gulls and terns. The other, west, Yakima County side there has very few gulls or terns. Access to the river there from the west, Yakima County side, is prohibited by the Yakima Training Center military installation, though trespassing there by competitive Yakima County resident bird listers remains common.

Technical information

Model

Canon PowerShot S100

ISO

200

Focal length

18.4 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.0

Shutter speed

0.02 sec

Dimensions

3591 pixels x 2627 pixels

Original file size

931.41 KB