[obol] Pelagic-Upon Seeing the First Jaeger of Spring

[Norgren Family]

    Judging by the Rufous Hummer/Swallow/Purple
Finch postings, we have a quorum. Spring is here,
and not just in a few sheltered nooks. There was
a Purple Finch singing in my yard Monday morning(3/26)
for the first time this year, and another 2km
down the hill. Also an Orange-crowned Warbler
singing at the second spot, where the grass was
rimed with frost. Out on the open ocean, the truly
spring species were limited to jaegers.
     I understand many of them spend the winter
south of the equator. We get glimpses of them in
the fall as they hasten thither. I've seen a handful
over the years on beaches and estuaries of Lincoln
and Clatsop Counties, always one at a time and always
moving rapidly AWAY. A signature of late summer/early
fall pelagic trips is the swarms of jaegers lingering
above the horizon, often visible at a considerable
distance. I was briefly distressed to read days after
the October 28 trip of last year that THREE jaegers
were sighted and I missed them all. Upon reflection
I couldn't deny the irrationality of it. Did I wish
to exchange three bad looks at birds unidentifiable
to species for the one good look I got of a Leach's
Storm Petrel?
      The near miss with jaegers that day coupled with
the abundance of fulmars, bounding about in every
imaginable shade of brown and gray, epitomized the
shifting of the seasons. The fag end of fall, the
ocean in neutral, seas almost flat, windless, shrouded
in teasing voils of mist. At any moment it was all
going to shift into the raging, turbulent, jaegerless
winter.
      The March 25 trip logged a single jaeger, which
I once again missed. Close to shore the seas were
very high and I questioned the wisdom of being there,
despite the blue skies and lack of wind. It seemed
almost fruitless to look through binoculars. But the
waves almost disappeared as we moved off shore. By
the time the jaeger was sighted, roughly halfway out,
conditions were calmer and clearer than any summer
trip I recall. The shore never did disappear. For
the first time in my life I saw my familiar childhood
horizon in reverse-Prairie Peak, Mary's Peak, and
Fanno Peak from the west. These summits of Benton and
Polk Counties are obscured by nearby hills at the
beach, and by clouds and fog when off shore typically.
Their misty profiles some fifty miles distant
provided an appropriate back drop for the modest
numbers of Kittiwakes over our heads and the dwindling
number of Fulmars and Herring Gulls on the dazzling
blue surface. Winter had definitively shifted into
neutral.
      I have been on enough pelagic trips to almost
lose count, but this was the first one on which nearly the
entire company stood on the foredeck for the entire
return trip. The inbound leg of the day is typified
by numbing anti-climax. After a bad night's sleep and
early rising, nearly everyone is passed out in the
galley or sitting comatose on the afterdeck. The rain
pants that I neglected to bring were no handicap and
the extra binocular remained in my daypack the whole
trip. We stood at the bow and held conversations
at indoor volume. What great luck that the Saturday
trip was canceled, with a boat available Sunday.
     I waited almost 40 years to see my first Laysan
Albatross. It's been on my ten most wanted list
since elementary school. But when I remember this
trip decades hence I suspect it will be the people
on board that stand out in my memory. The albatross
and Horned Puffin were both expected at one level
or another, but the only familiar face I anticipated
was our lead guide's. It was a more than pleasant
surprise to find so many more on board and be able
to spend this extended period with them under such
comfortable conditions.    Lars Norgren