The nights have been just above freezing, but the days have warmed up to the high fifties. The evening skies have featured the new moon, and the morning skies Orion.
Saturday, Mark and I took a hike to the Cascades Raptor Center. They had been closed for about three weeks to deal with some construction, and this was their first open day for a while, so there were a lot of visitors. 
We were lucky enough to see three of the raptors out of their mews, a hawk, a screech owl, and a golden eagle. Mark tolerated my photography as we listened to docents tell us about the various birds and answer visitor questions. I didn't realize that raptors salivate a lot, and apparently, one docent gets a lot of bird spit on him. The most surprising observation was how much Dante, the golden eagle, squeaked like my folks' German shepherd when I rub her ears as he tore a rabbit carcass apart.
I managed a few pictures of the other birds, and it was a chance to experiment with making the camera focus on a bird and not on the bars of its enclosure. I'm not sure that I had a favorite raptor; I like them all and was enamored by all their sleek lines, and curved beaks, and the patterns of their feathers. 
Mark fell in love with the snowy owl's feet -- it had white downey feathers that looked like fluffy slippers with sharp claws poking out at the toes. I obviously have to get get him snow owl slippers for Christmas. 
We stayed for probably something like two hours before hiking back to the car. Just before we got to the parking lot, Mark spied a wild red tailed hawk in a tree. 
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