Beautiful day. Velda Baltrusch and I drove the raptor route down Lower River Rd, to Millegan Rd, over to Cascade Hound Creek Rd, finally back up to Ulm on the River Rd. Lots of Red-tailed Hawks (21). It was interesting that we saw that several were very dark and 2 were certainly of the Harlan’s race. Some were very light – we had the full range. We thought our day was made when a Red-tail and a Ferruginous Hawk had a little “twirl” in the air with the Red-tail taking over the Ferruginous perch on a round bale. The huge number of American Pipits on one stretch of road was jaw dropping. Obviously migrating. We had seen them in smaller groups up until this point. But the best was watching a Golden Eagle work over a carcass just on the other side of the fence from us. We watched it chow down for at least 15 minutes (lost track of time) until a magpie, a passing truck (and maybe it had enough to eat) and it was off. Overall – a wonderfully fun day.
The full trip report can be seen here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/279168