The gulls say it's a jaeger

 Yesterday was internationally recognized Hudwit Day.  Or maybe that's only observed at Tiscornia.  And no hudwits were observing it as far as anyone could tell.  But the gull flock was present and abruptly they all took off in one direction.  Which was odd since I didn't see a dog, and then when I looked up to the sky I didn't see an eagle.

What I did see was this, a brown bird sporting the biggest baddest brightest white wing flash that the beach has ever known.

Clearly gulls don't use shape in their jaeger ID since they flew immediately every time this leucistic young Herring Gull re-appeared.  I'm not sure if that will help or hurt it.  On one hand he's going to have a heck of a time finding a flock that he can rest with so may be more likely to get picked off by an eagle.  On the other hand if the flock finds a food source this bird may be able to commandeer it pretty easily.

I'm pretty sure I saw photos of this individual from Michigan City and since gulls almost always work their way south along our lakefront that probably doesn't bode well for this bird since it's desperate enough to go the wrong direction.

It's striking enough that a montage was in order.

Leucistic Herring Gull (I think)

Tim and I had this odd gull at Tiscornia while checking the flock for Mew Gulls yesterday.  At first glance I thought it was the first Glaucous of the year, but it was actually too white ... but had some dark primaries.  Ultimately we settled on it likely being a Herring Gull missing some pigment

It has an adult bill, and an adult Glaucous (or Iceland) would have a light gray mantle.  It also has the triangular head of a Herring rather than the heavy-jawed rounder head of a Glaucous.  The eyering is orange.

As it takes off it looks like the secondaries are fairly normal, but the primaries have markedly reduced both gray and black pigment, and there's some rows of secondary coverts that are basically white

A view of the underwing shows it's molting its primaries; P10 probably isn't visible from above.

P9, P8, and P7 look therefore to have dark pigmentation.  I'm assuming the piebald mantle and wing coverts argue for a pigmentation rather than a hybridization cause, though the markedly reduced number of primaries with dark ends might be a point in the hybrid column.

a total tease

It's that time of year.  The best time of year for finding rarities along southern Lake Michigan.  You've gotten a taste of something a lot of fun (i.e. a Pomarine Jaeger), and you know that more can be found.  And it feels like it's close.  And then this flies through your bin field at 3 Oaks.

 It's a small bird with complex black and white patterning.  One that you've never seen before.  One that you don't even know what it is.

Oh my mind raced for a couple seconds.  Pied Water-tyrant?  Some kind of Asian Swallow?  Unfortunately it quickly became clear that it had the identical size, shape, and flight style to the flock of Tree Swallows foraging over the ponds.  Unlike gulls and waterfowl that seem to act aggressively to birds that stand out to the eye, I didn't see any of the other swallows make passes at it.

I actually got the auto-focus to lock on briefly for this shot.

All the rest are manual focus.

It's fairly (but not perfectly) symmetric in the white patterning.  The head is mostly white, the eye black, and the bill yellow.  I'm not sure quite how a person would technically describe this bird.  It's missing all the blue-green color on the body, but also has the irregular white in the wings.  Albinism is defined as missing melanin.  Leucism, per Wikipedia, is a full or partial loss of multiple types of pigments which I guess is how this bird would be characterized.