2008 June 23,     from Portland, Oregon

Hello, Everybody,

The new slideshow is even more than usual just birds and flowers
rather than scenic, because that is mostly what I've been doing. I've
been based at my sailing friends Mike & Susan Huffman in Portland
for the past 5 weeks, taking it easy and doing truck and internet stuff,
reading a lot of good books, and venturing out for some camping
and day birding trips both solo and with my daughter EV. It's been a
time for record June temperatures: when I arrived it was over 95
degrees, then a week or more of 45 degrees day and night with
near constant rain, not the best for camping and hiking and birding.
Recently it's back to a pleasant normal and I'm about to head out
to camp and bird on the public lands of Oregon and Nevada.

In SW Washington I found a little sliver of private land at the edge of
the Columbia River, surrounded by a deer refuge, where the owner
permitted camping. It was nice to be reminded of my sailing days,
watching the big ships coming up the river to Portland.

SW Washington lacks BLM and FS land for camping, but there are
some State Forests which I was able to use, and in that part of the
country as soon as you climb above sea-level the forests get very
moist and lush with lots of undergrowth and flowers as well as
beautiful trees. Some of my flower identifications are a bit shaky, and
I'll appreciate feedback from those more expert.

Birding with EV was great: we saw seven species with young and
were able to get pictures of two of them feeding their babies. We
even saw a 'mystery bird', apparently a Mallard but with much too
much white on neck and flanks, and with ducklings much darker
than usual. And perched in the improbable habitat of the roof of an
amusement park merry-go-round, an uncommon Western Screech-
owl. 

The server address is still:

http://www.meetmarsha.com/john 

The new slideshow is:  

08 05 06 May June OR WA

Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose
OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then
OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I
have used my up-to-date Zone Alarm to be sure the .exe files are
virus free, so you can safely ignore Windows's warning about
'dangerous <.exe> files'. 

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

If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic
to download these large files on a phone line   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, perhaps to print, just let me
know. I have limited space on the server, so must periodically
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 of all of
them from 2004-2008 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs.
And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the
future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested,
I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download
the slideshows if they have a Windows computer. None of this is
commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the
better.   

Regards, John Armitage
1-970-250-9809