HBSP Razorbill and Parasitic Jaeger but no Sharp-taileds - darn

["Mike Turner" <teebird1@sc.rr.com>]

On Friday, 3/14/2003, a RAZORBILL was seen at 11pm from the Georgetown Co.
side of the jetty at Huntington Beach S.P. in SC.  The Razorbill was diving
about 10 meters from the rocks almost at the end of the jetty, and was
working its way into the inlet.  Easily seen from such a short distance was
the long bill, thickest a little bit past the middle with a white line
running from the top to the bottom.  The Razorbill also had  a little white
area behind the eye so I guess it would be an adult in nonbreeding plumage.
It also dove with its wings partially outstretched and pointing towards the
tail of the bird so that the wing tips were the last thing you would see
when the bird dove underwater.
Also seen yesterday was a light-morph adult PARASITIC JAEGER in breeding
plumage.  The jaeger was seen about 75 meters from our vantage point on the
dunes in front of the castle at the south end of the park.  The jaeger was
seen at 5pm flying north real close to the surface, maybe 3 meters or so.
There were STRONG NE winds blowing all day, maybe resulting in the jaeger
and Razorbill being so close to shore.  My friend and I, a birder in town
for business who lives in Washington State, separated the parasitic from a
pomarine by the formers slender build, especially through the neck, and
longer, thinner wings.  I also noticed that the bill was all dark and the
upperparts (except for the light yellow nape) were brown, with a chestband
of the same color that seemed to go all the way around the bird.  In the
field guides the pomarines of the same plumage show a brighter yellow nape
and darker brown (almost black) upperparts.  Pomarines also are very
heavy-bodied, thick-necked and have broader wings, which our bird did not.
Our bird was separated from a long-tailed by the aforementioned chest band
and the whitish basal 2/3 of the primaries on the underside.  The bird did
have a long tail, but neither of us found it helpful in identifying this
bird.  My birding partner, Phil, has a lot more experience with jaegers than
I do as he spends about a month every year on the Aleutian Island of Adak,
and he feels more comfortable iding jaegers on the basis of their body and
wing shape and flight style.  His impression of our jaeger was that this
birds wingbeats were much faster than that of a pomarine and more resembled
the flight of a falcon.  My only experience with any jaeger were two
long-taileds seen on a pelagic out of Washington State in August of 2000 so
I have to defer to Phil on that one.
Other cool birds were two Long-tailed Ducks seen from the jetty; at least 22
Purple Sandpipers, also at the jetty; 3-5 Great Black-backed Gulls, all
first-winter birds; a good showing of 200 adult plumaged Laughing Gulls, all
heading north with about the same number of Bonaparte's Gulls.
It was a wonderful day birding in spite of the biting wind out at the jetty.
We saw exactly 100 species at the park, and about 110 with the birds we saw
en route.  Although we "dipped" on the sharp-tailed sparrows (despite two
trips to the jetty, one in the early am and one late in the pm), and me
"gripping off" Phil on Palm Warbler, we both agreed that the jaeger and the
Razorbill were adequate substitutes.

Mike Turner
Columbia, SC