From south of Tucson, 2014 December 27 Hello Everybody, In October EV and I finished our summer birding with visits to several places in the Willamette Valley, and with perseverance managed to spot the uncommon Sharp-tailed Sandpiper being reported at Fern Ridge. This is a bird primarily of Asia and Northwest Alaska, but during migration is sometimes seen along the western coast of Canada and the US, so we were happy to find it. After some good visiting and Chinese, Indian, and Mexican dining with Joey Tuttle near Santa Cruz, I headed for Arizona to spend the winter. Maderios Forebay at San Luis Reservoir provided its usual good stopover camping, with lots of shorebird activity to photograph. Then on across the Mojave desert and into Arizona, avoiding all the Interstates. I think the desert is overall my favorite habitat: scenic long views, few people, interesting vegetation, and unlimited non-organized free camping easy to get to. It was interesting to note the progression of vegetation on my drive: Palms in CA, then Joshua Trees, Prickly Pear, Creosote desert, Cholla, Saguaro, and Ocotillo. I've spent the last month camped on State Trust Land south of Tucson, five miles Green Valley where my friend Betsy Hall is enjoying retirement living. I have a permit for State Trust Land, and fortunately this is so remote that nobody has bothered me about the 14 day limit. The prime birding area Madera Canyon is just another 5 miles farther up the road, and the many feeders there attract lots of birds which makes photography easy. There was even a Painted Redstart who was hopping around the eaves of a cabin too close for me to get sharp focus on. I am surrounded here by Phainopepla, and have a pair of Northern Cardinals which visit my camper several times each day, often posing nicely. For some reason there are no Saguaro cactus right here, although many not far distant, but there are plenty of other types which are scenic and also require some care when one is hiking around. The mostly sunny days are great for my new solar panel, and I am easily keeping up with many hours each day of computer use and running the furnace around dawn in the cold mornings (27ยบ this morning). Sweetwater Wetlands is under an hour north on the edge of Tucson, and it has offered some good birding as well as a great sighting of a beautiful huge Bobcat (seemed about the size of a small German Shepherd) which was quite nonchalant about my being nearby. My 'big' camera has gotten quite unreliable for sharp focus, so it is on its way back to Canon in Virginia under warranty. Fortunately I have my former 'big' camera, which now seems 'medium', to use in the meantime; it has less magnification and is slower, but at least seems to focus reliably. Also in the technology arena, I had a great Christmas Day when I was able to use tips gleaned with Google to restore my MacBook Pro laptop from running abysmally slow back to very fast. 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_11_12_Nov_Dec_OR_CA_AZ.exe and the equivalent in .zip format for Mac users. Boilerplate follows: 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 click the tiny circle with the backslash through it near the upper left corner for full screen (in Yosemite) 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 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