Condo birding + Van Wagner's Beach - Sep 13, 2013

ANOTHER killer north wind in the forecast. Will we be paying for this later in the fall when all the birds leave early?! Or will there be Gyr's and Ivory Gulls around by November?!

If this weather pattern holds, I'm going to be one very very happy condo-birder for weeks to come... As of right now, it looks like another dose of N winds Monday and more warm temps by Thursday... Awesome stuff...

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I awoke early yesterday to do a balcony watch - and it was COLD ... From 7am-2pm I watched on/off from my balcony and from my office (yes, I retreated to an indoor watch for a while)...The highlights -


American Wigeon - 16
American Black Duck -  7
Mallard -  20
Northern Pintail -  31
Green-winged Teal -  25
Greater Scaup -  4
Double-crested Cormorant - 1 mostly creamy/white leucistic individual
Turkey Vulture -  3
Osprey -  1
Parasitic Jaeger -  4  ..one was an adult...
Long-tailed Jaeger - 2 adult type and dark juv
Great Black-backed Gull -  2
Caspian Tern - 6
Common Tern -  5
Chimney Swift -  8
Eastern Kingbird -  1

A healthy flight of Geese and Common Loons went unrecorded...
 

Only photo I took on the morning - uber distant record photo of the milky cormorant... It felt like the other birds DID NOT enjoy it's company, and harassed it a few times in the short views I had...

Overall it was a pretty good morning. I'm a firm believer you've got to "pay your dues" when it comes to finding some rares... And once again (similar to lots of the mornings I've had), there were several "payment birds"... 

- The kingbird flew past 150ft up - late and strange location (future rare fly payment) 

- there was a steady "flight" of Chimney Swifts (future rare diurnal migrant payments)

- I had a freak bird (white cormorant) - (future payment for obvious/sexy rarity)

- a steady/large flight of ducks for the date - (future rare fowl payment)

- solid time lakewatching (jaegers, gulls etc) - (future rare flyby waterbird payment)

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Anyways it was fun! Then I started slackin (not watching as much) when I got work of a FLOCK of SIX Long-tailed Jaegers at Van Wagner's beach ...

That prompted me to get out of the condo at to Van Wagner's....

From 3:30pm-6pm the highlights were:

American Wigeon 3
Pomarine Jaeger 2
Parasitic Jaeger 2
Long-tailed Jaeger 1
Chimney Swift 2
Peregrine Falcon 1

I didn't have my camera with me, but as soon as I arrived an "adult" Long-tailed Jaeger (3 years + a few months) PUT ON A SHOW with a beauty of a juvenile Pomarine for 15-20 minutes... Doing tag-team chases of gulls at super-close range... At one point, they couldn't have been more than 100ft away, over the shore/land!

It was freakin awesome!

Around 5pm-ish a juvenile Parasitic Jaeger did a chase/power flight 50ft offshore, parallel to us at Lakeland - providing the trifecta of Jaegers within 100ft...

Some of the best darn views I've had at Jaegers from land in a long time!