From the NW Nevada desert, 2014 October 22

Hello Everybody,

After an excellent summer in Oregon, I'm on my way to winter in southern Arizona, via a stop in Santa Cruz CA to visit Joey Tuttle and Laurie Waldman. I spent much of the summer camped on Forest Service land by Indian Ford Creek near Glaze Meadow in the Cascades near Sisters -- last year EV and I found a nice campsite there with good birding around the edges of the nearby meadow, and this year I made this my semi-permanent hangout. EV was able to come over from Portland for a couple of camping and birding long weekends. Mixed in were a couple of visits to the Oregon coast and to the Portland area for birding day-trips with EV and birding friend visitors: Betsy Hall enroute from Washington to Arizona, and Paul and Carol Gregg touring the Northwest from Houston. 

I also twice went a bit farther east to the blinds and guzzlers at Cabin Lake Campground, which always seem to produce a good mix of birds very easy to photograph up close. The crossbills are especially interesting -- their beaks are strangely shaped to enable them to pry open conifer cones to get at the seeds inside with their tongues. I was also pleased to get my first-ever photos of Golden-crowned Sparrows actually showing the golden crown instead of just a bit of yellow there. Cabin Lake Campground in on the edge between the thick ponderosa pine country and the desert, and the little water guzzlers there attract many birds from both of these habitats.

Just south of Cabin Lake is the volcanic cliff formation of Fort Rock, where a Sage Sparrow had been reported seen recently; I thought would be a potential new bird for my 'life list' -- it was the only bird I saw there and I was quite pleased, until I discovered that EV and I had seen this species several years earlier near Death Valley. It was still fun to hike around Fort Rock and find the target bird.

Amy and Lewis (now 6 years old!) had flown from Boston to visit EV, and they rented a cottage on the north Oregon coast for a couple of days. Soon after I started driving west toward the coast to see them, my truck engine broke down. Fortunately I was able to coast into a safe place to park,  but my RV towing plan paid to have the truck towed back east to the nearest Ford dealer; I considered renting a car, but the 10 hours of driving there and back for a few hours visiting discouraged me, and I never did get to see them this visit. A shorted injector in the truck engine which caused the failure was fixed in a couple of days under warranty, and I went right back to Glaze Meadow.

Betsy and I went up to the mouth of the Columbia River where a Buff-breasted Sandpiper was being seen, and we were able to spot it out in a field which floods with the tide -- it's a rare Eurasian bird so we were happy to see it. At a nearby lake known as a good place to see Wrentits, we managed to find one, and a few days later EV and I returned there and found a small flock of them -- we were quite pleased, since we've both been looking for this bird for several years with no luck. Wrentits are very tame, letting one approach within a yard or two, but they stay well buried deep in branches, twigs, and leaves and so are difficult to photograph. 

My old body has refused to get comfortable in my sea kayak for more than an hour or so, not long enough to have a lot of fun in it. And the little inflatable pontoon boat I bought for the Florida everglades and mangrove lakes turned out to be much less useful than I expected outside of Florida. So both boats are now on consignment to be sold in Portland, and I have quite a bit more room available in my camper and truck as well as a simpler camping and traveling life.

Remember, these large files may take several minutes to download; while
waiting to get a really fast uplink in Santa Cruz, Joey has migrated me
to the commercial host ICDSoft, which will greatly speed things up for
those of you who have a fast download connection. There has been a
myriad of opportunities for typographic errors in putting up all the
older slideshows; please let me know if you run into any problems.

The new server address is:     http://john-armitage.com

The new slideshow (at the top of the list) is: 14_08_09_Aug_Sep_OR.exe and the equivalent in .zip format for Mac users.

If you can easily change your screen brightness, you might optimize it
for the best viewing.

NEW: For Mac users there is a .zip file to download, and here is how to
use it (please let me know if you have any problems):

go to    http://john.qued.com/   and click on the blue line for a list
of slideshows

click on a zip file for a slideshow

after downloading, open the zip file

open the extracted folder which will be in the same folder and have the
same name as the zip file (likely in Downloads)

select all of the jpg files, using Cmd+A (select with this method only,
to keep them in order)

use the space-bar for a Quick View slideshow

use the spread arrows in the upper right corner for full screen

don't click the menu bar, it will disappear

use the right and left arrow keys to navigate

use Escape to exit full screen

optional: delete the zip and/or extracted folder

Boilerplate follows: 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.

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 would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just
let me know. If you don't want to get any more emails like this one in
the future, please 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 broadband internet connection.
None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the
pictures, the better.

Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com