Hi Tweets,

Heather and I went hiking at Mount Rainier National Park on Saturday, 2004
July 17, and located 8 Gray-Crowned Rosy-Finches at "Third Burroughs".

The Sunrise entrance is located at the NE corner of Mount Rainier NP. To
get to 3rd Burroughs, hike out of the main parking lot towards the mountain
and Frozen Lake. At the triple junction, take the left hand fork up 1 st
Burroughs. The middle fork is the Wonderland trail and the right hand fork
is a nice moderate hike to Fremont Lookout, which has been good for
White-tailed Ptarmigan in the past. The Ptarmigan have been seen most
often on the hillside just above and past Frozen Lake and near the Lookout
early in the morning.

The trail to First Burrough continues up the north slope at a steep angle
and crosses several snow fields, also at steep angles. A ski pole goes a
long way to feeling more secure, along with waiting until the sun softens
up the snow a bit. The snow fields in this area had lots of winged ants on
them and they were MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRDS and AMERICAN PIPITS going after them.

The trail continues up Second Burrough and only crosses one minor snow
patch. Horned Larks can be found on the trail going around the south side
of 1st Burroughs on the plateau. The top of Second Burrough's makes for a
wonderful place to have lunch and watch climbers snaking up and down the
mountain from Camp Sherman. In the fall, the pass makes a good spot to
watch raptors, as well.

Third Burroughs is actually the morain of the Winthrop glacier and the view
down a couple of thousand feet to the glacier and across towards Mystic
Lake is quite breathtaking. The Rosy-Finches were located on the last
plateau before the morain working the snow field edges. We found 3
juvenile birds first, which didn't make themselves know until we were 10'
away from them and continued to be quite accomodating. The adults stayed
further away, but the one male( at least) in the group was quite
impressively plumaged. The other treat was watching the American Pipits do
their display flight and song. The males would fly up about 100' and make
this repeated "tre-weet" song while fluttering roughly in place.

The total hiking mileage is about 8 miles and a couple of thousand feet at
high altitude. The sun is intense and even with sunblock on we managed to
get pink noses and rosy cheeks.

Have a glorious hike in one of the premier National Parks in our own
backyard.



Marcus Roening
Tacoma, WA
marcus.d.roening at gsk.com