On Saturday, Lonnie and I led a Black Hills Audubon trip up to Paradise Mt. Rainier. Our target bird was the Ptarmigan. We took the Golden Gate Trail up to Skyline Trail, where we were greeted by a juvenile SOOTY GROUSE. We took a quick rest at this point and had a COOPER?S HAWK fly by and an adult GOLDEN EAGLE soar overhead towards Paradise Glacier and over the ridge, it was gone. A little further up the trail we stopped for lunch. We found a nice spot out of the wind. A GOLDEN-CROWNED and WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW joined us while we ate. One of group members spotted a hawk soaring below Panorama Point. When it landed, it turned out to be a ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK. We did get better looks at it later in the day on the way back down. Along the Lower Skyline Trail, we spotted some AMERICAN PIPITS working the snow and snow line. We grinded on up still higher to the Pebble Creek Trail. We stopped at 7000ft before heading back down. We did miss the Gray-crowned Rosy Finches and Ptarmigans but we all had a good time.

Dave Hayden
dtvhm AT nwrain.com
Centralia, WA