From southeast of Tucson, 2015 March 31 Hello Everybody, The last three months have been mostly about taking it easy with lots of book-reading and photography in this mostly clear and sunny high desert scenery, interspersed with periods of intensive looking for 'new' birds to see, and especially for the many uncommon and rare Mexican birds which just barely come over the border. It's quite exciting to see a bird which as been reported on the internet and to know that it may well be the only bird of that species which is known to be in the lower 48 states right then. And it can be somewhat frustrating to return again and again to a spot where an interesting bird is being reported, but you can never find it. In a slightly different vein, I viewed a Red Phalarope which is usually strictly seen along the coast, and this one single bird was the only one being reported inland in the entire US. Of course the whole bird 'listing' activity is just a contrived game like so many of our hobbies and interests -- but it does provide an incentive to go a lot of fun places. Ben spent three weeks camping with me in earlier March, and was good at hearing and spotting and photographing the tiny little birds perched in the foliage far away -- and he could see them so much better it made me realize that I badly needed new glasses. Now I feel like I have 'laser vision' compared to before! EV flies in to Tucson from Oregon in a couple of weeks to spend an extended week camping and birding with me -- it will be fun to have her share in the places and birds I've recently found. After I drop her at the airport to return to Oregon, I'll be heading directly for Big Bend NP in west Texas for a brief attempt to see the Colima Warbler which EV saw several years ago but which I missed then. Next will be direct up to Magee Marsh in Ohio for the spring Warbler migration and the self-proclaimed 'Biggest Week in American Birding'; I've had a great time there the past two Aprils, and when EV decided to stop there for a few days on her way to a reunion at Oberlin College, and enticed Linda and Will Piper to make their first visit there at the same time, I couldn't resist doing it again. After that, it will likely be heading for the west coast via Colorado. 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: 15_01_02_03_Jan_Feb_Mar_AZ.exe and the equivalent in .zip format for Mac users. This email is also repeated there in .txt format. 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