Amy Schumann and I co-lead a SAS field trip to Mt. Rainier/Sunrise today, with help from Dave Swayne and Sam Woods. We had a glorious day, with awonderful group of birders, mostly clear skies and temps between 60 and 75 degrees. Along the trail out to Frozen Lake we had fantastic displays of acrobatic flying by Sharp-Shinned and Cooper's Hawks, some interactions with Clark's Nutcrackers and some prolonged encounters between accipiters. We had a cooperative juvenile Pine Grosbeak alight in front of us. Below the trail up to the Mt. Fremont observatory we saw a herd of almost 40 mountain goats. At the observatory, acting on advice from Bob Sundstrom, Amy almost stepped on a group of four White-tailed Ptarmigan (a life bird for 8 in our group!). I was glad I brought my spotting scope because I used it to show the ptarmigans and a large black bear to about 25 people having lunch up there. We turned around and went up the first Burroughs Mountain and saw a Merlin capture a rodent (we saw five species of rodents too, but it hadn't occurred to any of us to capture or eat them). We were also overflown by several Prairie Falcons, a flock of Band-tailed Pigeons, and a flock of Canada Geese. We couldn't turn any of the Horned Larks into Gray-crowned Rosy-finches, nor could we convince ourselves that the very largest Cooper's Hawk was actually a goshawk. The wildflowers are starting to turn to seed, but we did see a nice sampling anyway.

Gary Kelsberg, Seattle
kelsberg at u.washington.edu