Mountain Bluebird near Hawkwatch Site on Chelan Ridge
Randy at Hawkwatch International site on Chelan Ridge. Grace, a Hawkwatch International observer/counter, is in the background. She is from California but doing this counting for two months.
View Northwest towards Methow Valley from Hawkwatch International Site on Chelan Ridge.
View southeast toward Lake Chelan and Columbia River from Hawkwatch International site on Chelan Ridge
Riley, the dog, Grace, Randy and Leif, a Hawkwatch International educator/observer, who hails from Indiana
We look back to Hawkwatch International Site as we leave after a couple hours there observing migrating hawks, which included golden eagles, sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks, and a Northern harrier.
Hawkwatch International also had two banding sites on Chelan Ridge. Chris had trapped a sharp-shined, weighed and measured it, sexed it, and banded it. He showed it to us just before releasing it. That's the hawk's tail sticking out of the cylinder that he used to keep the bird calm
Randy helps Chris extract the adult female sharp-shinned hawk
Notice the orange eye. Juveniles have yellow eyes. As protein in the diet accumulates as the birds age, the eye becomes redder. This is what Chris told us anyway.
We're looking at her back, but she has turned her head all the way around in order to keep an eye on me.
Beautiful Swakane Canyon. It looked as if it would be great birding in the spring. The road was so terrible that we left before reaching a supposedly good birding spot.
The view of a section of Lake Chelan ( 50 miles long) from Grouse Mountain. Randy birded here one morning while I played golf at the Lake Chelan Municipal Golf Course.
