Lake Michigan Pelagic

Having sold my old boat last summer I was a lot more interested in the Michigan Audubon Society pelagic run out of St Joseph.  I was hopeful of picking up Red-necked Phalarope for the year with pipe dreams of LT Jaeger or Sabine's Gull. 

Needless to say, neither of the big ticket items happened.  A Great Black-backed Gull appeared under darkening skies.

We started heading south as the rain closed in around us.  The first Black Tern appeared under some interesting lighting.

With yeah, some lightning.  (why does every boat trip I go on have basically this Doppler view?)

We headed south working our way away from the worst of it.

 It was raining pretty hard for a while.

Unfortunately, if the front concentrated any birds they slipped past us.  We saw a few more Black Terns.  I briefly saw a grayish shorebird that could have been a phalarope, but it disappeared in a wave trough before I could get a good look.

Ironically, I did get a year shorebird though.

The Stilt Sandpiper re-appeared at the (newly re-moisturized) Black Rail field.

Pelagic season begins

Light south winds made it a perfect day to get out on a smooth lake on the boat.  While we had vague hopes for Long-tailed Jaeger or Red-necked Phalarope we had to make do with a few groups of juvenile Black Terns.  We've had them out there both times we've gotten out on the lake this time of year.  The blue sky background was harder to montage than I expected.

Next is two views of another bird which had richer brown scalloping to its juvie back feathers.

Black Tern (and Bonaparte's Gull) flocks often will do this erratic slip-slide downward.  The Bonapartes frequently follow it by landing on the surface though I've never seen a Black Tern land in the water.  I didn't notice what the stimulus for it was.

We saw a total of 24; this is the most I managed in one frame.

the easy Thayer's plumages

Got out on the boat for a half day today. It wasn't quite calm enough to be able to find a lot of loons on the water; we had considerably more success chumming in the gull flocks. One contained an adult Thayer's Gull. It made a number of circles around the boat.

They average neater shorter bills and more head smudging than the Herrings.

The eye in full sun in the photos is flecked smoky gray, though appeared dark in the field.

The bird stood out most as being a white-winged gull on the underside of the wings.

Here's the famous Venetian blind pattern to the upper primaries. Per the books Kumlien's and Kumlien's-Thayers integrades generally do not have a completely black leading edge to P9, and most lack any black on P5. This one has more black on the leading edge of P9 than our Thayer's gull at Tiscornia this winter.

Juvenile/first winter plumaged birds are the other most common age group to see. Here's a first cycle Thayer's with a first cycle Great Black-backed at Tiscornia from a week or so ago.

Note again the small bill, as well as the primaries much paler than a Herring would show.

Again, Thayer's is a whitewing from the underside.

The first cycle bird also shows a Venetian blind pattern to the primaries to some extent.

The darker secondary bar is a good mark to separate Thayers from a dark Kumlien's.

Now the trick will be to try to find a 2nd and 3rd cycle Thayer's.

an adult Parasitic

Today's pelagic didn't turn up any review list birds, but we did eventually run into a jaeger that Tim spotted on the water. We slowly worked up to it and it made a couple passes around the boat.

The easiest ID feature is the medium length pointed central tail feather; we get probably 5-10x as many juvies as adults at Tiscornia, it almost feels like cheating to get a close adult.

The marbled face, breast, and belly pattern are winter features.

The clean brown underwing marks it as an adult; per the Olsen and Larsson Jaeger book 2- and 3-year-old birds will retain at least some juvie feathers.

Similar to the dark marbling of the underparts, the upperparts shows some white edging.

One more view of the rich underwing.

Phalarope slam

There's a handful of relatively rare birds I've never seen in Michigan, though that I certainly expect to encounter eventually. One of these is Red Phalarope. Tim and I found 2 individuals well off shore earlier this week in the boat.

The birds are first fall birds moulting into winter plumage. This one retains some of the buffy coloring to the throat and face.

There is a difference in the underwing whiteness reported between Red and Red-necked Phalarope with Red being whiter. To me the flight style of the noticeably heavier Red was more distinctive to my eyes at least.

Note that the above bird is moulting its entire tail.

The other individual retained a lot less buffy in the throat and has less black in the cap.

The bird didn't exactly land gracefully. Here it's rolled its body past 90 degrees as it dives for some prospective appearing foam.

It would land by bouncing its breast into the water and skidding to a stop a la the murrelet.

At one point the bird landed amidst some Bonaparte's Gulls and Common Terns that were resting on the water. One of the Terns chased/followed it about for quite a while through the air.

Here's the previous posts from this fall if you want to compare the body and bill shape to Red-necked Phalaropes and Wilson's Phalaropes