Saturday afternoon my 15 year old son Daniel and I scrambled up Fay Peak directly above Mowich Lake on the NW side of Mt Rainier National Park. Fay Peak is a spur off the ridge which runs north from Spray Park. At 6492' the summit reaches almost to timberline with ledges and snowfields on the north side and cliffs and meadows on the south. Mountain hemlock forms a scrubby fringe among the crags of the ridgecrest. We were still about 300 feet below the ridge when Daniel called out "Daddy. A ptarmigan just flew over the ridge. It was almost pure white." He's seen white-tailed ptarmigan before, even petted them up on Mt Daniel a few years ago, so I suspect he was right about the ID. I looked too late for the ptarmigan but in time to see a flock of about 100 gray-crowned rosy finches flush from the rocks along one side of the snowfield above us. They swirled and tumbled down across the face of a cliff and as we watched, a prairie falcon soared into view over the ridge, folded its wings and plunged down maybe 200 feet into their midst. The flock didn't even seem to react as the falcon sliced through it and shot back up above the skyline empty-footed. The falcon wheeled around and dove again, came up empty again and sailed down the ridge to a snag while the rosy finch flock precipitated onto the cliff. Although the prairie falcon shortly took off to the south and out of sight the rosy fnches continued to play around the north side of the ridge, at one point settling on the rocks and pecking at grass seedheads just 15 feet below us. From the summit Daniel spotted a Cooper's hawk headed north and a greater gashawk, of the Southwest race, headed sourth. He also picked out a marmot far below us in the meadow and a black bear traversing a snowfield half a mile away on Pleasant Mountain. That's one of the reasons I like hiking with him - he's got such sharp eyes.