From south central Oregon                                  2015 Sep 28

Hello Everybody,

I spent a week in May birding at Magee Marsh (in Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie) for the third year running, and once again enjoyed the busy pace of the warblers in spring migration. EV, and Will and Linda Piper and their friend Bill Zwartjes, who was counting up around 500 species in his 'Big Year' quest, had decided to come to Magee Marsh independently, which tempted me for one more visit. And Jane Mills was able to come up from Columbus for a few days, so we all had a great time.

I drove west to Colorado on small country roads (as I had from Texas to Ohio -- my little Garmin dashboard GPS is amazingly good at off-Interstate routing if I choose 'Avoid Highways') with no Interstates in several thousand miles, much more relaxing and interesting. As I approached Goshen Indiana I counted 32 Amish buggies on the roads, looking very smart with their black paint and high-stepping trotting horses. I had my first views of the pretty Wisconsin Dells country -- and it sure felt good to be back in the open spaces, public lands, and scenery of 'The West' where I belong.

At my brother's in Western Colorado I took advantage of my Favorite Ford dealer to have my rear differential rebuilt (for the second time) and to replace my stock rear springs + air-bags with custom made heavier springs, substantially improving the truck's ride and handling and avoiding future breaking of air-bag brackets.

It was then time to continue west on the small roads across Utah and Nevada for Oregon, as Amy and Lewis (now 7!) were arriving soon from Boston for a couple of weeks visit with 'Aunt EV'. They rented a beautiful house on the beach at the Oregon Coast, and we spent some fun time tromping around on the sand.

With expediting help from Arthur Morris, 'Mr Bird Photographer', I was able to get the new and very scarce upgraded version of my big telephoto birding lens. The older version was sharp, but the newer one is very sharp, in line with Canon's other top lenses, and it does make a difference. When I emailed Art to thank him for his expediting, he lamented that he was leaving in three days to lead a photo workshop in the Galapagos and was unable to obtain a copy of that lens for his own use there -- my lens was about to be delivered to EV in Oregon and since I was not desperate for it, EV was able to get it to Art in Florida just in time for him to use in on his trip. So I got my new lens checked out by a master. 

EV and I had a couple of fun birding day trips, and then a great day on the ocean to see Pelagic birds which are very difficult or impossible to see from shore. We were on a quite new 50 foot charter boat, mostly used for rod fishing parties, and had great luck with the weather: nearly calm winds and only slight swell, a bit of light fog but mostly sunny, so the viewing was great and nobody was feeling queasy. There were three or four guides on board, who were incredibly good at spotting and identifying birds even at great distances, and a dozen and a half other birders who were also helpful. It was especially thrilling to see my first Albatrosses, and EV saw 21 new birds for her life list and I saw 10.

I'm now making my very leisurely way to meet EV in St. George Utah in late October for our camping week on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I'm going to spend some days at Malheur NWR and the Steens Mountain area and then wander across Nevada, the most mountainous of the lower 48 states and the one with the greatest proportion of public lands.

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

The new slideshow (at the top of the list) is: 15_05-09_May-Sep_OH_OR.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 the files 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