October 18 [Day 51] The temperature at 0800 was -3C and with the westerly wind gusting to almost 40 km/h it felt rather cool. Morning cloud cover ranged from 5% to 40% cumulus providing excellent observing conditions. In the afternoon cloud cover increased to 100% and the temperature rose briefly to 2C before falling to -2C as snow swept from the west at 1740 obscuring the mountains and ending movement for the day. Migration started early with the first Golden Eagle passing south at 0759, but serious migration only started after 1000 and was then steady until 1733 when snow stopped play. Peak movement was 1600 to 1733 when 73 birds moved rapidly to the south, many flapping vigorously to stay ahead of the weather. The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the Osprey that passed at 1326, 8 days later than the last Osprey which was itself the latest ever seen on an RMERF count. A single adult dark morph calurus Red-tailed Hawk was the first Buteo in 3 days, and the 34th Peregrine of the season was seen at 1207. The Golden Eagle moving at 1725 was the 6000th raptor of the season: last year we didn’t reach this plateau until October 28 and we are currently 1278 birds ahead of last year on this date. Late yesterday afternoon we saw a Clark’s Nutcracker perched with an unshelled peanut in its bill and this morning at 0925 it was back with another peanut. The provenance of the peanuts is almost certainly Dale Patton’s feeder to the east of the ridge in Frank, and the bird is probably caching them for the coming winter. 11.75 hours (573.69) OSPR 1 (17), BAEA 12 (215), SSHA 15 (1172), COHA 1 (187), NOGO 5 (76), UA 1 (56), RTHA 1 (181), GOEA 228 (3880), MERL 1 (23), PEFA 1 (34) TOTAL 266 (6002)