We're in the midst of an unusual appearance of pelagic birds into Long Island Sound, something that any birder with an interest in such things knows and has probably checked out or would like to check out for themselves. Most recently this has resulted in a flurry of jaeger reports, both from boats and from shore, primarily from Hammonasset. It's good to bear a couple things in mind. First jaegers are well-known as one of the most difficult groups of birds to identify. Second, we're now in the time period when Long-tailed Jaegers migrate through the Northeast and Great Lakes. CT's three documented records of the species range from Aug 28 to Sep 3 (although one is hurricane related). While jaegers are never routine within Long Island Sound, Parasitic is the species recorded most often (by far) and the one being reported over the past few days. It's tempting to just default to Parasitic if you see a distant jaeger (especially if you'd really like to get one at species level on some sort of list), but the reality is that really distant jaegers probably warrant only "jaeger sp." Certainly any attempt to ID a Long-tailed Jaeger will require strong documentation, probably with multiple photos for anything less than an adult. But we'll never get the documentation if everyone just defaults to Parasitic for listing reasons. Greg Hanisek Waterbury