ANOTHER NEW BIRD FOR ST.KITTS
Searching the web has its benefits! Last week I had a bit of spare time and entered “birding st.kitts” and several pages back I came across a birding blog by Jerry Jourdan who had visited St. Kitts a couple of years ago on a cruise ship. The date was March 4th, 2010 to be exact.
He described that as the ship was approaching the Basseterre Harbour, he saw a few birds while taking pictures, and also got some shots on an unidentified bird that was flying away from him. Later he blew up the pictures and determined that the bird was a Long-tailed Jaeger, a rare bird for these parts. The sighting was confirmed from the photograph by two other avid birders, and I personally concur with their findings. This brings the number of different bird species spotted in St. Kitts & Nevis to 204.
The field guide “Birds of the West Indies” by Raffaele et al, state that they are a very rare migrant through the West Indies primarily August through October and March through May. This is indeed a rare sighting and it is very pleasing to add this bird to the list of birds for St. Kitts & Nevis. The Long-tailed Jaeger is a small Jaeger with long central feathers, grayish-brown cap, no breast band, back and secondaries greyish contrasting with darker primaries. The photo can be viewed at Mr. Jourdan’s site at Jerry’s Birding/Digiscoping Blog at http://jerryjourdan.blogspot.com/2010/03/west-indies-cruise-04-mar-2010.html
Interestingly enough, he also noted that he spotted a Masked Booby. While the Masked Booby is already on the St. Kitts-Nevis bird list, this was the first photograph and actual sighting of a Masked Booby that I have found during any sort of research!