Jaegers, Rouglegs and Peregrines, Oh My!

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These four reports plus the four posts below all regard Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011 !
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- Ric
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Email:  "Hey, Ric, this morning around 9:30 we had a juvenile Parasitic Jaeger at Pere Marquette!  We also had all three species of scoter fly by."  (Black, Surf, and White-winged)
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- The Lautenbachs
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Email:  "My sister couldn't identify this shorebird.  Can you help?  It and the Peregrine Falcon were at the Wastewater today. (Oct. 22)"
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- Bruce Delamarter,
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Bruce, thanks for the photos!  I'll leave the shorebird ID to others; watch for their comments below in the next few days.  If you told me that these were three photos of two different individuals, I'd believe it!  Shows what lighting can do!

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Meanwhile, 18 members of the club followed Charlie and Carol DeWitt on a Wastewater fieldtrip Saturday morning unofficially tallying tens of thousands of birds of 45 different species.  Once we get those birds entered at eBird, we'll post the numbers on this page.  Jim Ponshair stopped by to hand us a few of his Wastewater data albums from the 30 years he conducted the surveys (see Carolyn's survey report below).

Highlights of our field trip included a virtually endless stream of blackbirds, the same shorebirds as reported below, thousands of gulls, thousands of geese, thousands of ducks (including one Northern Pintail male and four Green-winged Teal), three Yellow-rumped Warblers, our first Rough-legged Hawk of the year (probably the bird in Mike's photograph below), and a Peregrine Falcon (probably the one in Bruce's photos above and Mike's photos below).

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Finally, Carolyn Weng reports:

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Brian Johnson and I surveyed the Wastewater for shorebirds. The eastern most cell (abutting  the Center Dike north of the West Lagoon) was drawn down to mudflats and had attracted almost all of the shorebirds detected:  Dunlin, Pectoral Sandpiper, both Yellowlegs and Killdeer. Making up for the lack of shorebird numbers were the variety of ducks collecting in the lagoons and a beautifully plumaged juvenile Peregrine Falcon.

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