Astoundingly Pleasant

Something that amazes me is the thought about how many vagrants that may go undetected in birding as opposed to the amount of vagrants that are discovered.

While there's no possible way to ever truly know these things, it's fun to wonder about them.  When a person is out in the field birding, and they find an incredible rarity that has a great story that goes behind it, it makes people think things like:

What if that person took another trail that day?
What if that person scanned this side of the lake rather than that side of the lake?
What if that person didn't go to the bathroom in THAT group of trees to look up and see that bird while taking care of business?
What could've been seen if the weather wasn't so bad for my pelagic birding trip to get cancelled?
What if this person would've picked a different spot to phish in birds rather than this spot?
What if this person didn't follow this common bird to lead them to seeing the rare bird that they didn't know about at first?
What was at a productive location on the day that NO ONE visited?

Obviously, these questions sit on both sides of the line.  While birders have some crazy stories about how they got lucky and found a mega rarity, the opposite side is easy to see and realize what if things were a little bit different and the bird went unnoticed completely.  If I could guess, I would guess that over 70 percent of vagrants in Arizona go undetected.  There are birding locations that are covered regularly, but how about the spots in the state outside of southeastern Arizona that are covered much less frequently, or never at all.

This story of this post will make it's home at Lake Pleasant, Arizona.  Lake Pleasant is a large lake north of Phoenix in both Maricopa and Yavapai Counties.  For birders who love to bird in the two counties, Lake Pleasant is a valuable location that has been essential for many birds.  Although Lake Pleasant attracts many birds, it is intimidating for a lot of people to bird because the views of most birds have to be conducted through distant scanning through spotting scopes.  Some birds are going to be incredibly hard to pick out in such a scenario because of the distance.  Imagine frequent divers like a rare Red-throated Loon or Long-tailed Duck who wouldn't stay above water for long and one would have to get lucky to find one in the scope if it did select a distant spot out on the lake.  For my decade of hardcore birding, it wasn't until recently that we've had a birder cover Lake Pleasant regularly on a boat, which has led to more discoveries than before.  That birder is my friend Mary McSparen!  Mary has found a lot of great birds on Lake Pleasant, and she has birded a lot from her boat.  And I've been lucky enough to go on a McSparen "pelagic" before!

On September 17th, Mary found a first year Long-tailed Jaeger on the lake while she was boating.  The bird frequented the northern half of the lake, and spent a majority of it's time in Yavapai County but also crossed into Maricopa County.  Caleb told Mary to keep an eye out for Jaegers, and when Mary photographed the bird, Caleb told her she had a Long-tailed.  After Mary saw the bird the first time, she couldn't refind it again after it flew off.  Right before she announced her discovery, I committed to stay at work and work a "no daylight" shift that would last 15.5 hours.  I predicted that it wouldn't stay for very long, and I was pumped for Mary that she had the awesome find that she did.  It stung to not be able to chase it the day that it was found by Mary, but I brought my birding equipment to work with me on September 18th and would hit up Lake Pleasant once my shift ended.  In three hours of scanning the Lake from three different viewpoints, I was unable to locate the Jaeger.  My searching efforts were rewarded with 29 Caspian Terns and 2 Marbled Godwits as decent consolations.  On September 19th, I brought my birding equipment with me to work again because I knew that Mary and Susan Fishburn were going to be surveying the lake thoroughly.  In the early afternoon I received a text message from Susan saying that they were unable to relocate the Long-tailed Jaeger further.  I took it in my mind that the bird had likely moved on.  Based on two days without the bird being seen after Mary's find, I think most of the birding community also thought that the bird had left Lake Pleasant.  I moved on from hoping I would see the Long-tailed Jaeger, because I believed that it was gone.

Caspian Terns surrounding Lake Pleasant

Birders were shocked and went crazy on September 27th when Mary re-found the Long-tailed Jaeger again.  Caleb relayed her photograph to the birding community.  I was at work, and once I would get off at 2 P.M., I raced to Lake Pleasant were I would have close to three hours to scan the lake.

For me, Long-tailed Jaeger was a huge deal.  It would be a life bird, it would be great to get in my home county, and it was something I really really wanted to see.  After getting robbed of a pelagic trip, a trip that would've most likely featured plenty of Jaegers from all three species (South Polar Skua as a fourth), this was something that I needed to see.  Jaegers are up there for me as far as favorites go among birds, and I was hungry to see it.

Once at Lake Pleasant, I found Dara, Jeff, and Ryan and we all scanned the lake from a great viewpoint at the Operations Center that is just east of Scorpion Bay.  It was great to have four pairs of eyes looking for one bird.  We all tried very hard, but none of us were able to land the gold, shockingly.  For me, it seemed as if it were the start of my own personal bad luck.  As I left the lake, I smelled this smell in my truck bed and I realized that some moron threw a pile of dog poop back there.  I think it was someone in my apartment complex who yelled at my brother for throwing a bag of dog crap (that was left where it shouldn't have been to begin with) towards the trash can, missing it, and leaving it there.  Perhaps they got our vehicles mixed up and decided to throw the poop in my truck bed.  That's my best guess.  Hopefully no other Jaeger scanners smelled it...

Crappy luck would start to follow for me, true to the pile of poop.  On the 28th, several reports came in for the Jaeger.  One of them was from Ryan, and he went to a different viewpoint and had the bird right before he had to turn back around and head back to his car.  He had hiked for a mile to get to this viewpoint, and it seemed like it had potential to be a productive one, and it obviously was.  I was out of town that day with family, and I couldn't do any chasing...

September 29th was a killer and was a viewing party for a lot of birders getting to see the Jaeger.  I thought about calling into work and enjoying the fun with my friends, and they had close views of the bird.  It seemed to me that I would go to the Operations Center after work and be able to pick out the bird without too much trouble.  Once work got done, I did go to the Operations Center and scan.  Steve Boyack joined me for the whole time.  In over three hours of scanning, we didn't get on the Jaeger.  I was irritated, especially when I scanned a flock of gulls about two miles away and saw a Jaeger-like bird chasing them.  Due to distance, I lost the bird just as quickly as I caught a glimpse of it.  When daylight faded, I was tired from standing all day, both from work and Jaeger searching.

On September 30th, I was at it again.  I left work 30 minutes early, determined that this was going to be the day that I got the Jaeger.  It crossed my mind to call in again to work to try during the morning hours that were seemingly way more productive.  I realized I couldn't afford to miss a work shift, even though a Long-tailed Jaeger was at stake.  And during that morning, plenty of birders were seeing the bird well.  I "knew" that I was going to get it when work got out.  Once I did get to the lake later in the day, I decided to switch things up and go to where Ryan had the bird during his scan.  I would hike the Pipeline Trail to Pipeline Cove for a half-mile, and then take another half mile east of the trail up a mountain towards a viewpoint of the lake.  The hike had it's rough and rocky terrain once I went off trail.  One slip I had caused me to fall and land on my butt on a sharp rock.  It hurt like hell, but the next second it was forgotten because the Jaeger was out there.  Once I got to my scanning point, three quick hours went by and I was once again Jaegerless.  And this time, I was angry.  It was that seemingly crappy luck..and my butt hurt horribly when I finally took my mind off of the Jaeger for a few minutes.

October 1st was the 1st.  In my times of birding, weird things have happened on the first of the month.  I don't claim to be superstitious or anything like that.  Maybe I'm borderline of it, sometimes.  The Jaeger was reported again by Eric and with good views right from the Operations Center from mid-morning into early afternoon.  As I was reading reports while I was working, I actually felt good about my chances to finally get on this bird.  I had already put 14 hours of scanning in for the bird in my first four tries.  Caleb was Caleb when he reached out to me.  Having already seen the bird, Caleb encouraged me that I would get it too.  After I would get off of work I would go to Lake Pleasant again for the 4th time in 5 days.  And I planned to set aside October 2nd and 3rd too as I finally reached a few scheduled days off of work if I didn't get it AGAIN this time.  Like fishing, staking out rare birds can have the same effect.  You have to keep your line out in the water if you want to be successful.  You can't win if you don't play.  Once I got to the Operations Center, I gave the Lake another detailed scan.  The time started to fly, and it seemed as if I was seeing everything but the Jaeger.  I was growing tired of scanning and it was frustrating, but I really wanted the darn bird.  The time of dusk was with me before I knew it.  I had watched Sabine's Gulls and flocks of Sterna terns most of the time while I scanned hoping that the Jaeger would come in to harass them, which it had done a lot of earlier in the day.  As I scanned during the last minutes of light, a brownish bird caught my attention that was with a flock of gulls.  When I tried to zoom in on it, the lighting on the lake changed within seconds and I couldn't see it anymore due to lighting and distance.  At this point, I had had enough.  I thought there was a good chance that that was the Jaeger and that the fading light would have the final say in me seeing it.  I was really irritated.

My only hope was to scan a closer section of the lake, where the dusk lighting wasn't as strongly in effect.  In this scanning pan I found a few Sabine's Gulls flying around.  I inched over to look at another bird that was darker in color and I was surprised to see that it was the Jaeger!  It was coming in to harass the Sabine's Gulls.  A break in the action happened and the Jaeger turned in the other direction and flew west towards Scorpion Bay, giving me a chance to study it well.  Even in the fading light, it's cool-toned coloration was evident.  It flew in similar ways to a sterna tern.  It landed on the water briefly, and I could see it's smaller structure and bill as opposed to other Jaegers.  When it kicked up again, it relentlessly chased after a Common Tern to showcase some classic Jaeger behavior.  It was very acrobatic in it's pursuit of investigating what the Common Tern may have caught.  When it flew up at one point, I could see it's longer, rounded tail feathers obviously extending beyond the tail.  It followed the chase by landing on the lake again, where I watched it sit and float until it was dark out.  My sighting finally came at the last second of my fifth try, and it was closing in on the 18th combined hour in the combined searches.  In birding, I call this a "buzzer beater".

Even though I got the Jaeger and had an awesome "buzzer beater" experience with it, I wanted to see more of it.  On October 2nd, I went straight back to the Operations Center again to scan in the early morning.  I found Gordon there, and we started to scan the lake.  It wasn't long before I picked out the Jaeger harassing gulls far north of us and into the Yavapai section of the lake.  It was awhile before we would pick it out again.  When we would pick it out again, we had Sean Fitzgerald, Steve Hosmer, Harold Bond, and Terry West with us.  After Sean had a brief glimpse of it in the distance, Gordon spied the bird sitting on the water beside a Herring Gull and a California Gull.  It was interesting the see the size comparisons between the three birds.  After a few minutes, the Long-tailed Jaeger flew around a bit and allowed us to have distant but decent flight looks.  A conversational piece that made me laugh went like this.

Terry:  "I think it's come maybe a little bit closer".

Steve:  "That's also what they say about Saturn..." (followed by Steve laughing)

Sean and Gordon had to leave before everyone else, and an hour later, the Jaeger was still hanging out in a general area, which was the delta near where the Agua Fria River flows into the northeastern side of Lake Pleasant.  I was hoping all morning that it would come closer to the Operations Center where we were spending our time at, but it wasn't, and it was staying in one distant general area.  The thought of getting closer to it was running through my mind constantly.  And then a way of getting closer to it crossed my mind..

Harold, Terry, and Steve were still with me.  The bird kept on hanging out at the same spot in the big delta area just west of the Agua Fria inflow.  I asked, "Guys, wanna rent a boat for an hour and split the cost??".  At Lake Pleasant, it costs 95 dollars an hour to rent a pontoon boat that holds eight people.  They all looked excited at the thought of getting closer to the bird.  It all worked out that we had at least 25 dollars of cash apiece between the four of us.  Harold said right of the bat that he had years of experience with driving boats.  As we realized that the team we had was a perfect team for what we wanted to do, we sped over to Scorpion Bay Marina and rented a boat.  After signing papers and paying for a rental that would give us a time frame from 11:45 A.M. to 1 P.M., we got on our boat.  With Harold as captain, we headed out toward the north side of the lake towards the location where we kept on seeing the Jaeger.  And while we were on our way, the Jaeger met us on the way there..

The Jaeger was feeding on dead fish that were floating on the water, and over the course of 20 minutes, we got to watch it sitting on the water, feeding on fish, and flying back and fourth several times.  At one point it flew along the Maricopa and Yavapai County line.  We were able to get within thirty feet of the bird, who didn't seem to care about our presence for most of the time.  It was freaking incredible!  Here is a selection of photographs that I captured of this latest life bird of mine, and with a memory-lasting story to go along with it.

Common Loons and a flock of Red-necked Phalaropes were also something to enjoy and photograph out on the lake.

The Long-tailed Jaeger quest that I went on lasted for about 24 hours over the course of six different visits to the Lake.  I am beyond grateful that I was able to see this epic bird and get the views of it that we were able to get on the boat.  Huge thanks to Mary McSparen for finding the bird and to my pelagic team of Harold Bond, Terry West, and Steve Hosmer.  

Lake Pleasant Pelagic, the Long-tailed Jaeger team:  Harold, Terry, Steve, Me

What's crazy about the bird is how easily it could've gone without being seen if it weren't for Mary discovering it.  I highly doubt anyone would've scanned the lake with the patience to discover this Jaeger.  With Mary covering the Lake regularly via a boat, I bet she'll discover more Jaegers in the future.

Finding rarities is one of the funnest aspects for birding.  It gives birders a chance to see birds they might not ever have a chance to see much or at all.  Getting out in the field and finding birds is awesome.  I encourage any birders reading this to report their rare, uncommon, and unusual sightings to the birding community.  Whether the bird is rare for a state, county, or even a hotspot, someone will appreciate a post and will benefit from it.  It can be a bird that is uncommon, annual but rare, casual, accidental, or a mega, it's always fun and people want to hear from you.  Don't be shy!

My life list (all in the Lower 48 United States so far) is now starting to climb over 600 and is at 608.  Even though the pelagic trip didn't go through for me and was a huge bummer, this experience with my lifer Long-tailed Jaeger really made up for a lot of that slack.  Till next time!