I deleted Dennis' posting about how the plausibility of the
bird in the environment is important in evaluating a sighting report.
(Sorry, Dennis, if I have mangled your point). Anyway, I have an example.

I just returned from a hike in the Salmo-Priest area of NE WA and NW ID.
Had a Boreal owl calling over a high ridge camp, but did not see any
Boreal Chickadees. (Identifying, or even finding chickadees calling at the
top of tall trees when I'm carrying a backpack is beyond me.) Last
Wednesday we climbed Old Snowy, a 7500' peak in NW ID that is within a
half mile of both BC and WA. There were few birds about on this cool
blustery day. A pair of Golden Eagles flew by, then two accipiters that I
thought were probably Cooper's Hawks. Then I saw a really odd sight.

It was a single bird that I didn't see until it was directly overhead,
maybe a hundred feet up. It was approximately gull sized, with long
pointed wings and long tail, and a relatively heavy body and head. On the
bird's first two circles I could see that the two central tail feathers
were distinctly longer than the rest of the tail, by 1 to 2 inches. The
bird looked uniformly dark underneath. The bird was flying strongly, and
was very soon out of sight in the west.

I'd welcome the comments of tweeters on this bird. I didn't notice any
contrasting lighter area on the base of the bird's primaries. If it
weren't for the REALLY CLEAR view of the elongated central tail feathers,
I'd have called this an unknown raptor, probably a large falcon. Are
there any (moulting?) conditions that could mimic projecting central tail
feathers? The only jaegers I have clearly seen were Parasitic Jaegers
chasing gulls off Orcas Island in September.


Tom Besser
Moscow, Idaho
tbesser at vetmed.wsu.edu