Hello, Everybody,                       28 May 2006

I'm back at my brother's in Colorado for a few weeks, after four
months camping and birding in New Mexico, Arizona, California,
Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. The last several
slideshows have shown the earlier part of this trip, the present one is
from Oregon and a bit of Montana.

My daughter E.V. joined me for a week at Malheur NWR, in the high
desert of south central Oregon. We caught nice pictures of a few
birds at the visitor center, and then drove out to the nearby Sage
Grouse lek, where I had photographed the dawn display of the
males last year. We were astonished when the birds flew in just after
sunset and started strutting around, and we could hear them nearby
all night long. I've put one Grouse picture in the main slideshow and
the remainder in a separate little slideshow for those who wish to see
a few more. Although the area of the lek does not look any different
from millions of similar places nearby, these grouse have been
returning to exactly this same spot for years, perhaps thousands of
years. Along the little dirt roads of the Refuge, we spotted lots of
birds, but they were mostly rather far away for good pictures. E.V.
got so enthused that she started an Excel 'life list', so now she can
have fun adding to it.

After returning to Portland, we tried more photographs of Mike &
Susan's greyhound 'Jasper', and caught one good action shot
'suspended in air'. Next we visited the Ridgefield NWR which is only
20 miles north of the city, and were amazed how many different
birds we saw just a few minutes drive from EV's home, and how close
they were for good pictures. 

Just as I left Portland, my truck air-conditioner quit yet again, so I
returned to the little town of Burns which is near Malheur; earlier
there I had talked to a NAPA repairman who sounded really expert.
He found that the previous repairman had probably not flushed the
debris out of the system, so the new compressor and accumulator
had to be replaced again. This has cost the NAPA Warranty Center
$2400 so far, hopefully it will work for a long time now. In the process,
between studying my huge Ford shop manual and watching the
repairman work,  I learned a lot about how air-conditioners work.

I spent a few more days at Malheur, and was lucky enough to see a
Sora, a very reclusive marsh bird which had been spotted by some
hotshot birders driving just ahead of me   it appeared from the
reeds just enough for me to get a glimpse through the binoculars.
Almost immediately afterwards, I could hardly believe my eyes
when I saw an American Bittern standing calmly beside the road on
a grassy field   usually you hear their weird call from the reeds but
never get even a glimpse of them. 

While camped next to a roaring whitewater mountain stream, I was
amazed to see a dramatically marked male Harlequin Duck
perched calmly on a rock in the middle of the stream. After a few
moments it hopped into the water and went bobbing downstream
through the rapids. I think of ducks as shore birds, not mountain
whitewater birds. However, when I looked in one of my bird books, I
read 'nests along clear rocky streams with very fast powerful
currents'. The book also said they 'flock at habitual sites on rocky
coastlines with strong wave action, diving close to the rocks'   I
remembered that the one time I had seen them before was in the
rocky surf off Queen Charlotte Island BC.

Heading back toward Colorado, I was surprised to see a 'shoe tree',
with hundreds of pairs of shoes thrown up in the branches. A search
with Google tells that there are quite a few of these scattered along
mostly western highways, apparently just for fun. 

I visited the Lee Metcalf NWR in the Bitterroot Valley of western
Montana, where I satisfied an ambition to get good photographs of
goslings or ducklings    some Canada Geese cooperated
beautifully. Then I was thrilled when an Osprey perched on a nearby
tree and posed for photographs, but even better, for several
seconds it hovered very closely overhead looking for swimming fish,
and I got some nice close-up pictures. Unfortunately I missed his
strike and capture, and only got a mediocre picture as it flew away
with its catch.

My son Ben and his friend Bob Cook had driven up from Colorado to
go to Bob's little cabin overlooking the Bitterroot Valley, and I spent
5 days with them helping side the cabin with galvanized corrugated
sheet. The cabin is lined with logs inside, and its quite charming and
in a great location. Six years ago, before the cabin was built, the
land was burned over in a wildfire, but it's still a gorgeous spot with a
great view.

Somewhere up there I was bitten by a little tick which gave me
Colorado Tick Fever, fortunately the most benign and easy to
diagnose of the several diseases transmitted by ticks   some of the
others are real nasty. After a week of fluctuating fever I was well on
the way to recovery, and there are not supposed to be any
aftereffects. 

Here are the same old instructions for the slideshows:

http://www.firestardesign.com/johna 

(Note that this is still 'johna' in spite of my email address change to
be just 'john')

The new slideshows are < 06 Apr Oregon.exe > 
& <06 Apr Oregon Grouse Lek.exe>

Most of you will be using Internet Explorer: you can either choose
OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK if you want to
have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I have used my
updated PC-cillin to be sure the .exe file is virus free, and in this case
you can safely ignore Windows's warning about 'dangerous <.exe>
files'. 

Right-Click or Right-Arrow will advance to the next picture
Left-Click or Left-Arrow will return to the previous picture
Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show seems stuck

If you don't have a broadband Internet connection it's not realistic
to download these large files   please let me know, as it is very easy
for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the
individual images, just let me know. I have limited space on
firestardesign.com, so must sometimes remove older slideshows to
put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of
any of the 'back issues', or all of them along with their
accompanying eMails, on CD. And if you don't want to get any
more eMails like this one in the future, just let me know.

Regards, John Armitage