While I went there looking for plants, not birds, I have a very
memorable scenic birding experience to offer. This was after climbing
the Matterhorn, one of the taller (THE tallest?) peaks in the Wallowa
Mts. in NE Oregon. I was goofing around on the summit, enjoying the
amazing snow-capped scenery of almost the entire Eagle Cap Wilderness
laid out before me, sparkling with seemingly hundreds of alpine
lakes and tarns, a Prairie Falcon came sweeping up the slopes and
hovered at eye level and very close range for about 30 seconds,
checking me out before wheeling off back down the slopes. Pretty
"bomb" moment, as my students would say...

BTW, the Wallowas are one of my very favorite places on Earth, and if
you are a backpacker and haven't been there, go this summer!!! It has
many miles of splendid alpine-subalpine trails and is relatively
under-utilized. Just be sure to pick one of the trails not used by
the horse-packer companies, as those ones can be muddy & pretty
fouled by animals And if you like plants, the Wallowas are a very
interesting and diverse mix of Cascadian & Rocky Mt. elements, as
well as home to numerous endemics.

Mark



>From: lammergeiereyes at aol.com
>To: obol at lists.oregonstate.edu,
>tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Date: Fri, 18 Apr
> 2008 02:37:24 -0400
>Subject: [Tweeters] Query: Most scenic and moving
>birding destinations?
>
>HTML Attachment [ Scan and Save to Computer ]
>We all have a favorite local patch, but which
>Northwest birding destinations are blessed with
>particularly captivating scenery in your experience?
>Where have you gone birding and been especially
>touched by the beauty of a place? We can all find the
>aesthetic richness in individual birds, but often the
>moments we never forget come not from individual
>creatures, but from the vistas we enjoyed in the
>course of a search.
>
>Just working on the olde birding "bucket list." For
>me, I found the the Salmon River in Hood National
>Forest particularly striking in an iconoclastic kind
>of way; the temperate rainforest at its finest.
>
>Best wishes and Good birding,
>Blake Matheson
>Carmel, California and Portland, Oregon
>
>
>
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--
Mark Egger
Seattle, WA
USA
mailto:m.egger at comcast.net