Subject: jaegers at Point No Point
Date: Sep 11 14:18:31 1995
From: Duane Palmer - duane at hardy.u.washington.edu


On Friday, September 8 we witnessed lots of activity at Point
No Point. We arrived about 10:30 and stayed for a couple of
hours. The fish were jumping out of the water and the common
terns were jumping in! Lots of terns and gulls and phalaropes
(far away and terrible foggy lighting, so I'm not sure which),
and at least 4 jaegers (presumably parasitic). We could identify
the individuals to some extent by the different plumages.

One bird exhibited very interesting behavior. It was dark and
gull-like--perhaps a young jaeger. When an adult jaeger entered
the flock of terns to "hunt"--this bird would mimic its actions,
wheeling in tandem. A young bird, learning, was our best guess.
Any other ideas?

Anyway, we left to check out some other places and returned
as the fog was clearing, hoping to have some better looks, but
all was pretty quiet by then.

We did see another jaeger at the Kingston ferry, both coming and
going. All in all, a lot of fun.