ML489703541

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Caroline Poli was watching the lake from Powers Park, and she notified our group chat that five large dark birds with gull-like flight were headed in our (those of us at Palm Point) direction, though they frequently stopped to rest on the lake. 8 minutes after Caroline's message we spotted them coming in low above the choppy windblown waves on the lake where they landed once again and spent a couple of minutes floating. When then took off again, Rex Rowan was astonished to see white flashes in their primaries and he realized that they were jaegers (he shouted "OH MY GOD, THEY'RE JAEGERS!"). We watched them proceed northward in a line, but apart from the primary flashes and pale bellies on some we couldn't tell much about them in the field. They looked uniformly sooty in color, blackish rather than brown, and none of them exhibited the "tail blobs" of adult Pomarines (although I was able to make those out on at least one of them in my digiscoped video. At least one showed a whitish belly. I got some video/photos using my smartphone as I scoped the jaegers with Jose-Miguel Ponciano's scope and Andy shared the photos/video with pelagic expert(s) for opinions on which species these jaegers were. NOTE: Andy Kratter sent my digiscoped video and photos to Michael Brothers, formerly of the Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet, and Michael replied, "The very large white patches on the underside of the primaries seems best for Pomarine Jaegers."

Technical information

Model

NIKON D7100

ISO

1250

Focal length

480 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/1600 sec

Dimensions

775 pixels x 436 pixels

Original file size

83.91 KB