Just before 7:00 this morning, Jeff Bolsinger and I observed a South Polar Skua from Robert Moses SP, near the western tip of Fire Island, Suffolk County, Long Island.
The bird appeared among 150 or more actively feeding shearwaters, all but a few of which were Cory's. (With Patricia Lindsay's help, we ultimately recorded two Greater and one Manx Shearwater, one Wilson's Storm-Petrel, six immature Northern Gannets, an immature Parasitic Jaeger, and modest numbers of Laughing Gulls and Common Terns.) Jeff detected the skua flying from west to east in a very direct fashion. We readily recognized the bird as a stercorariid by its dark plumage, powerful flight, pointed wings, and white underwing flashes, but it took a few moments before we saw the bird in direct comparison with other birds. As this was happening, we noted its uniformly dark plumage (lacking any discernible barring or streaking) and bold white upper-wing (as well as under-wing) flashes. Fortunately, the bird turned in and approached closer to us, coming into direct comparison with and dwarfing a Greater Shearwater, which appeared roughly half its size in terms of overall bulk. Next, we were briefly perplexed when a "tern" it was wrangling with turned the tables and started chasing it. It dawned on us that this other bird was actually a jaeger, and we were able to judge quite confidently that the jaeger was markedly smaller than adjacent large shearwaters, and that the latter were markedly smaller than the skua. As it wrangled with the tiny-looking jaeger, the skua's relatively broad wings and short tail were readily assessed. Both skua and jaeger appeared to settle onto the water and vanished from view. This gave us hope that the skua would remain until Patricia Lindsay arrived, but, unfortunately, we never saw it again. The three of us did pick up the jaeger a little later, flying westward and giving good views of its structure, color, and barred underwing and tail coverts, indicative of an immature Parasitic Jaeger. Shai Mitra Bay Shore ________________________________ Change is in the Air - Smoking in Designated Areas Only in effect.<http://www.csi.cuny.edu/tobaccofree> Tobacco-Free Campus as of July 1, 2012. -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
