Hi Tweets: Today my husband and I rode our bicycles on the Iron Horse Trail from Cedar Falls to the Snoqualmie Tunnel. On our way back, we stopped at the Deception Crags Climbing Area when two raptors flew close overhead, making distress calls. We didn't have binoculars, but the birds were so close my sharp-eyed husband identified them as PEREGRINE FALCONS. After observing the birds for several minutes, we made an educated guess: this pair has a nest on one of the cliffs, and two men ascending that particular area?were disturbing the birds. I told one of the climbers they probably had a nest, and he pointed to a shelf of rock nearby and said he thought there was one there.
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This is an extremely popular climbing area. There were between 25 to 35 climbers there today. These two young men were ascending a cliff closest to the bridge over Change Creek. I am alerting the Tweeters network and also will?e-mail DNR and Washington State Parks. These birds could easily be left alone by simply marking this one cliff off limits to climbers.?If anyone in Tweets has contact with the climbing community, some outreach might save these birds from abandoning the area. While it was exciting to view the falcons up close,?they definitely are at risk.
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Liz Brown
Edmonds, Wash.