February 17 No observation. I was at the Valley View site at 0715, but with steady wet snow and all ridges obscured I didn’t stay long. The snow stopped by late afternoon and the ridges partially cleared but this early in the season there was little chance of raptor movement so I didn’t return to the site. At 1053 I was driving east along Highway 3 to Pincher Creek in heavy snow when I saw a large falcon perched on a post by the road. Assuming that it was probably a Gyrfalcon I turned back and as I approached it realised that it was an adult Peregrine Falcon (probably a female) showing all the characters of the subspecies tundrius: i.e. relatively thin and pointed malar marks, pure white upper breast “bleeding” into the relatively fine barring of the lower breast in a “V” and a fairly light blue-grey dorsal surface. It flew low to the south and disappeared into the snow leaving me to wonder what a bird of this race was doing so far north in mid February. This was, in fact the first falcon I had seen in the area this year, and I have heard of only a few sightings including a juvenile Gyrfalcon with a dead Mallard in its talons seen NE of Pincher Creek by Wilber Tripp on February 3. The most common raptor in the area this winter has been Rough- Legged Hawk which has been fairly widespread, including 4 or 5 near my home in Beaver Mines. More surprising was an adult dark morph Harlan’s Red-tailed Hawk which I observed near Beaver Mines on several occasions between January 5 and February 3, which was also well north of its normal wintering range. It is possible that this was the same bird recorded migrating south along the Livingstone Ridge, 20 km NW of Beaver Mines, on the very late date of December 7. An adult light morph calurus Red-tail was also in Beaver Mines on January 6. All the buteos appeared to disappear from the Beaver Mines area between February 3 and 5, and David McIntyre also noted that Rough-legged Hawks in the Rock Creek Valley to the east of the Piitaistakis site disappeared around the same time. Wintering adult Golden Eagles were seen fairly regularly in the Rock Creek Valley, with David McIntyre reporting a couple of juvenile birds seen for the first time there this winter on February 5, and an adult and a juvenile bird (presumably residents) were seen flying above the ridge during my visit to the Piitaistakis site on February 1. On February 8 David recorded 4 Golden Eagles (3 adults and 1 juvenile) moving north above the Rock Creek Valley, but whether they were residents, migrants or just wandering birds is uncertain. Seventeen Bald Eagles were counted on the Pincher Creek Christmas Bird Count, and by the second week of February they were being seen in low numbers throughout the area.