My wife and I spent 5 days backpacking in the Pasayten wilderness (hiked in from Iron Gate trailhead to Horseshoe Basin at 7000 feet) and were amazed by the number of American Three-toed Woodpeckers in the 2006 Tripod fire burned zone. We must have seen at least a dozen, and watched mother birds feeding fat grubs to chicks. I kept hoping one would be a Black-backed (a would-be lifer for me, but no luck, although some had minimal white on their backs, probably the fasciculata subspecies?). I also had a large accipiter that I tried to make into a Goshawk, but couldn't (I hadn't realized that some Cooper's Hawks have an eye stripe, although it isn't prominent). Fun to watch the bird jet through the trees and dive at prey. We had a nice pair of Golden Eagles, and a playful pair of Kestrels, plus lots of Mountain Bluebirds, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Cassin's Finches, a Townsend's Solitaire and a Lazuli Bunting. And cougar tracks, deer, many types of rodents, coyotes, and at least a dozen different types of butterflies (I didn't pack my "Butterflies of Cascadia"), and the occasional mosquito.

Gary Kelsberg