From Northwest Washington state 2017 July 4 Hello Everybody, The past three months have been so full of intensive birding resulting in so many 'worth-showing' photos that I'm putting them in two separate slideshows, one now and the second in a few weeks when I've had time to do all the Photoshopping involved. Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas are on the Central Flyway migration route so spring is a good time to be there, and this region also has quite a few birds not so likely to be seen where I spend most of my time. By hiking before the early springtime dawn out to blinds placed to observe the leks where the males display to compete for the females, I was able to see two of the three Grouse family birds unique to that area. And I managed to see several elusive sparrows which I had never seen before. I was surprised to find that these parts of Kansas and Nebraska are very pretty country, quite hilly, with many small streams and lakes, and very green in the spring. Much nicer than the impressions you get driving I-70, which may be over a flatter part of the landscape, and which has also flattened the hills and straightened the curves. Kansas mostly lacks the BLM and FS public land I like for camping in, but partly makes up for it with a series of State Fishing Lakes which offer primitive camping sites. And Nebraska has several National Forests which are quite rugged and forested. Southwestern South Dakota has a huge area of badlands which offer very nice remote driving and camping -- although somewhat less remote feeling now because of the great amount of oil/gas activity which has sprung up since I was first there ten years ago. After having spent 5 weeks visiting family and friends in Israel, Michal drove her new camper from Tallahassee to Syracuse for her son's college graduation, then west via Magee Marsh in Ohio to rendezvous with me in the Black hills of Southwestern South Dakota. Before heading for North Dakota via the badlands, we spent several days birding at a remote grassland lake which was swarming with Yellow-head Blackbirds and even a surprising flock of Long-billed Curlews which obligingly kept flying around us offering nice flight photography opportunities. Soon to come will be North Dakota, where EV joined us for ten days by flying from Portland, and we had a very busy and successful time looking for the grassland specialty birds. The server address is: http://john-armitage.com The new slideshow (at the top of the list) is: 17_04-06_Apr-Jun_KS-NE-SD.exe and the equivalent in .zip format for Mac users. This email is also repeated there in .txt format. Boilerplate follows: 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. 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-armitage.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) make sure the jpeg files are sorted by filename, not by date, size. etc. select the first jpg file and then all of the jpg files, using Cmd+A (select with this method only, to keep the files in numeric 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, El Capitan, and Sierra) 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