Hi All,

Sunday my wife and I went to Sunrise on Mount Rainier for a quick and casual check on any cooperative alpine species hanging around the vicinity of the parking lot and buildings, and the road in. We saw pretty much the usual suspects, on a totally gorgeous day. Additionally, even by midday the parking lot was only very lightly populated - perhaps it's still a little early in the season for tourists and perhaps all the much-discussed storm damage has prevented people from going there. (The road to Sunrise really showed no ill effects from the storm, although the road to the White River Campground was undermined in several places and restricted to one lane.)

The Clark's Nutcrackers were their usual aggressive selves and provided a number of easy photo ops, such as the one at this link http://www.tubbsphoto.com/-/tubbsphoto/detail.asp?photoID=4128692&cat=38986.

The most interesting situation we found was a pair of MOUNTAIN CHICKADEEs nesting in one of the log beams in an employee residence building. The log had dried and cracked in such a way that there was a nice sized opening at the junction of the beam and the building wall into which the birds had gone and built a nest inside the cavity. The nest itself was back in and not directly visible although we could see one nestling raising its head to get fed. The parents busied themselves carrying food back and forth, and I got a decent shot of one of the parents (in very worn, bedraggled-looking plumage) with what appeared to be two large caterpillars in its beak. The link to this image is at http://www.tubbsphoto.com/-/tubbsphoto/detail.asp?photoID=4128680&cat=38988.

John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com