From Fairbanks, Alaska                        2017 July 23

Hello Everybody,

Mostly I've spent the last few weeks driving and camping in the vast
reaches of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, but I've finally
caught up on Photoshopping the pictures from ten days of intensive
birding in the northwestern quarter of North Dakota with EV and Michal
in June. April, May, and into June is the high time of the year for
birding because of the spring migration, and North Dakota is right on
the Central Flyway, so we had a very productive time.

In addition to seeing some of the grassland specialties, several of
which were 'life birds' to add to out lists, much to our amazement we
saw two Whooping Cranes. Most of the wild Whooping Cranes summer in NW
Canada's Wood Buffalo Park, and winter at Aransas NWR on the Texas Gulf
Coast. In 1941 the entire population of wild Whooping Cranes was down to
15 birds, but with strenuous conservation efforts there are now around
300, still well less than the 1000 birds deemed necessary to remove them
from the endangered species list. The two birds we saw are from second
flock of around 100 birds which has been established summering in
Wisconsin and wintering in Florida -- ultralight aircraft have been used
to teach this flock how to migrate. All the birds in this flock have
tiny GPS transmitters on their legs so the biologists on the
reintroduction project can keep track of them. When we arrived at the
Upper Souris NWR the ranger at the desk told us about the Cranes and
phoned the Refuge Manager, who volunteered to meet us and lead us out
the 10-15 miles to where the cranes were being seen. They were first
spotted by a farmer who called the Refuge to report 'two huge white
birds' were in his field. When the manager arrived to see the birds, he
got a cellphone call from the tracking biologist to say that there were
two Whooping Cranes in the area, whereupon he replied "Yeah, I'm
standing here looking at them."

In the tiny town of Powers Lake the local birding expert spotted us
birding in the nearby marsh, and came over to tell us about all the
local good birding hotspots, helping us see several hard-to-see birds we
might have otherwise missed. She also told us where we could see
Long-eared owls with chicks in the nest, and sure enough as soon as we
stepped out of our trucks, there they were.

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

The new slideshow (at the top of the list) is: 17_06_Jun_ND.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