Parasitic jaeger photographed at Michigan City, IN in 2006 by John Cassady.

The combination of great birds the week before and the prediction of strong northwest winds resulted in a big turn out of birders for the Miller lake watch of August 29. Close to twenty people showed up, at least two from as far away as Terre Haute. John Cassady, one of the regulars whose photos have graced this blog, was there, still smarting from having missed last week due to the frivolous task of dropping his only child off at Butler University, where she is a freshman. (When I asked him whether they encountered frat guys holding signs thanking parents for leaving their daughters, he replied that if he had seen any such thing he would have turned around and brought her home.)

The first good bird of the day was a diminutive gull about  a quarter mile offshore. It had a thick black bar on each wing, dark secondaries, and a tail band. Too small and early in the season for a black-legged kittiwake, the small gull was actually a little gull. This European species, which for a time nested in Wisconsin, has declined markedly from former years, when we would see numbers of them, usually later in the season with Bonaparte’s gulls (come to think of it, the Bonies have also largely disappeared.) One probably shows up nearly every year off the northern Indiana coast line, but I have not seen one for a long time.

This was not a major flight day as bird numbers were kind of skimpy. One exception was the continual stream of chimney swifts that eventually totaled 879 birds. I thought that given the birding talent assembled, including a number who are top flight photographers, it would have been a perfect circumstance for a non-chimney to fly over- oh, maybe a black or white-collared. But, alas, reality imposed its harsh rule.

Apparently the phenomenon has been going on for several weeks but I had not seen it before: thousands of double-crested cormorants scattered far offshore. Lines of the dark birds were criss-crossing the Chicago skyline, many at the very edge of what the scope- assisted eye could discern. At that distance they were like mirages, blurry empherata without shape that would alternately vanish and reappear as they changed positions. For awhile they seemed to have no direction, but eventually they converged to an area closer in shore, where they were joined by gulls. There are times when Lake Michigan can have a very maritime feel and this was one of them.  I kept expecting pods of cetaceans leaping amidst the birds, and their absence reminded me of where I really was.

Given where I really was, I was curious as to what fish could be abundant enough to support such a frenzy. Decades ago the common forage fish of Lake Michigan was the emerald shiner but their population crashed, as have so many other species that feed on plankton. I asked two friends who are experts on Lake Michigan, Dale Bowman (the Sun-Times outdoor writer) and Phil Willink (ichthyologist at the Field Museum). Dale’s answer: “Alewives or perch. Both are being seen in numbers on shore because of the goofy shoreline temperatures this summer.” Phil leaned towards perch: “I have seen more juvenile yellow perch this summer than forever. There were schools in Burnham Harbor that numbered in the hundreds or thousands.”   

My cormorant reverie abated with the shout, “Jaegers.” I picked up two very distant jaegers as they moved west, similar to the path of last week’s long-tailed. For a brief period a third jaeger joined them but it soon was lost to sight. The remaining birds were clearly of different species- they differed in size and flight and amount of white in the wing. Fortunately, as the birds came a little closer, the long tail feathers of one marked it as a long-tailed.  The other was a young parasitic.  Everyone hoped for a repeat of last week, but it was not to happen as the birds stayed their course and continued beyond the horizon. (And your blogger had to rely on a photo taken at another time and place)