Greetings all

Yesterday Charlie Wright and I fended off our itch to twitch and ended up having a great day of birding and hiking the Skyline Trail at Paradise, Mount Rainier. Our main highlight of the day were 4 White-tailed Ptarmigain, one of which was a near full grown chick just east of Panorama Point. There is a large snowdrift just east of the point with a detour around taking the High Skyline Trail. Once this trail met back up with the lower Skyline Trail, we doubled back to the base of the snowdrift, this is where after some patient observing and waiting Charlie picked out the first Ptarmigan near the trail streak crossing. Closer inspection turned up 4 birds all very tame practically walking over our feet!

Other highlights include: 2 Prairie Falcons, 2 Golden-crowned Sparrows (my first of the fall), 2 alpine Dippers, and a good assortment of butterflies and mammals, including one Mountain Goat near where we had the Ptarmigan (my first Goats outside of Sunrise Access).

Many photographs were taken and can be viewed here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shyalbatross/

Also newly uploaded are many photographs from our recent Westport Seabirds pelagic trips, just tab thru the pages on the bottom.

Cheers,
Ryan Shaw
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