On Sunday morning (11/06/05), Michael and Roger
Woodruff and I birded Sprague Lake. Specifically, we
wanted to relocate the juvenile jaeger that had been
previously reported.

After a stormy night of rain and snow, the conditions
were still quite blustery but without precipitation.
While broken clouds raced across the sky, the sun
managed to peak through at irregular intervals.

When we arrived at the north end of the lake, the
resort gate was locked. However, there didn't seem to
be much on the north end anyway.

Just south of the Adams/Lincoln County line, we set up
our scopes and began scanning in earnest. After
observing some distant BONAPARTE'S GULLs dancing over
the whitecaps on the lake, Michael spotted our quarry.


A dark juvenile jaeger was quartering the lake in
front of the Four Seasons Resort. As other observers
had noted, the bird flew well up into the Lincoln
County side of the lake and then reversed itself and
flew to the northern tip of Harper Island. It briefly
alighted on the water a couple of times, and then
dived and harrassed gulls on our side of the lake.
Finally, the jaeger landed on one the gull roost
islands to the south of us.


In the meantime, Michael was struggling against the
blustery wind while digiscoping the active jaeger.
Some of his photos will be available for review, but
we believe this bird is a dark morp PARASTIC JAEGAR.

While we were tracking the bird in flight, the bird
appeared to have very little white on the upper
primaries while the overall body color seemed
uniformily dark. However, the pictures revealed the
bird to have much wamer browner coloration on the body
and face, and with more extensive white windows on the
wings. For what it is worth, the bird struck me as
beefier looking than the Long-tails that I have seen,
and more gullish than ternish.

Regardless of the species, all of us were quite
thrilled to see our first inland Jaeger. Some of the
other birds of note, were RED-BREASTED MERGANSERS-3
(near the county line), GREATER SCAUP in flight,
CACKLING GOOSE (around a dozen sprinkled in with the
Canadas), NORTHERN SHRIKE (3 around the lake), PRAIRIE
FALCON on the county line, AMERICAN TREE SPARROWs - 4
in the Adams Co. lakeside thickets, a couple of
juvenile HERRING GULLs (one in Adams and one in
LIncoln Co.), BALD EAGLE-3 adults on both the northern
and southern ends of the lake), COMMON LOON - 2 (Adams
Co.), GW Teal, Shovelers, Pintail, Buffehead, C.
Goldeneye, White Pelican-1, COMMON MERGANSERs in Adams
Co., WESTERN GREBES-74, and BARN OWL - 6 in Lincoln
Co. The Snow Goose and shorebirds were not seen. A
Mountain Cottontail was the only mammal sighting of
the day.

The weird sighting of the day, was a NORTHERN HARRIER
dive bombing on dabbling duck on the extreme
southeastern part of the lake. This unusual Harrier
behavior persisted for a couple of minutes. Was the
Harrier taking lessons from the jaeger?


Gina Sheridan
Spokane, WA



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