Camped in the Rita Blanca National Grasslands, 
at the extreme NW corner of Texas                        2019 May 10

Hello Everybody,

For much of the winter, the Sam Houston and Davy Crockett National
Forests provided nice Piney Woods free and quiet camping for Michal and
me. About an hour north of Houston's horrendous traffic (our 4th largest
city), perfect for reading and relaxing, and working on putting solar
panels on Michal's camper roof. As spring approached we switched more to
birding and photography mode nearer the coast, which is world famous
amongst birders for shorebird and migrating songbird locations. And we
drove a day south to the southern tip of Texas, to 'The Valley' (Rio
Grande Valley), for the less scenic but equally famous birding locations there.

Michal made a great short video about our winter, which you are welcome
to view at https://youtu.be/Spx8qAMzrE4

I had three areas in mind from earlier visits I knew I wanted to see
again and show to Michal: the Rookery at High Island Smith Oaks,
Rollover Pass and The Flats on Bolivar Peninsula, and Brazos Bend State
Park SW of Houston. We made several very successful visits there, as
well as other recognized birding locations along the coast NE of
Houston. At the Rookery, Michal got several unique photographs which
I've included in my slideshow. In The Valley I saw my first new 'life
bird' in a year and a half, the unusual looking Grooved-bill Ani.

One of our first birding camping locations was at Fort Anahuac Park, on
the east shore of Trinity Bay -- three days free, fairly scenic, with
Brown Pelicans flying right around our trucks. One afternoon Michal
called me to come out and look at the really evil looking roiling low
thunderstorm mamatus clouds right overhead; we suddenly heard a huge
BOOM, and could see a plume of water and steam rising to a couple
thousand feet a few miles to the north. Very soon a bunch of pickups and
emergency trucks with flashing red and blue lights started arriving at
the boat-launch dock a hundred yards from our trucks, and we soon heard
that a 767 cargo plane had crashed into the bay. By evening we were
surrounded by many dozens of trucks, with lots of hustle and bustle and
roaring air-boats all around in the night. Nobody asked us to leave, and
although noisy it was interesting, so we stayed put until the next
morning when the park was closed to the public, to be the base of
operations for the crash investigation.

After Michal left in mid-April heading for Tel Aviv via Miami,
Gainsville, and Tallahassee, EV flew in from Portland for her second
time birding in the Houston area. She's a great bird finder, and we had
a lot of fun covering much of he same ground I had just been over. We
had great luck at a couple of Anahuac NWR less well-known areas, finding
two birds which were 'lifers' for both of us: the Dickcissel, and the
Seaside Sparrow.

Photographing birds in flight against a background of trees, bushes, and
hills is difficult because the autofocus tends to jump to the
background, and although there are techniques which help prevent this,
it demands more practice and skill than I have been able to manage and
I've not had much routine success. When several prominent long-time
devotees of the Canon systen started raving online about how the newest
Nikon autofocus systen seemed to stick to the bird so much better, and
that they were easily getting flight photos with Nikon that they had
rarely been able to get with Canon, of course this piqued my interest.
The clincher was when Nikon brought out two new telephoto lens designs
of equal image quality to Canon's but very much lighter. And the camera
has double the number of pixels compared to my Canon 'Pro' body,
enabling tighter cropping for more magnification. I realized that I
could switch to Nikon and have better autofocus and image quality and
much lighter weight and even lower cost, so the decision was a
no-brainer. Carrying and hand-holding my heavier Canon gear has been
creeping up to more than I can now manage comfortably, so the timing on
the Nikon switch has been perfect. This winter with the new Nikon system
has been great!

Sometime early in the winter my much loved eight year old 17" Macbook
Pro laptop failed, with a repair cost greater than a 15" replacement
(the 17" is no longer offered). You know the old saying about a problem
being an opportunity: I now have a 21.5" 4K 'Retina' iMac all-in-one
desktop which I can use in my camper with a laptop-case-on-steroids
purpose made for the 21.5" iMac so I can conveniently pack it up when I
am driving. I love it!

My slideshows are roughly in chronological order. I've started labeling
them with more location information: if there is no location given then
it's probably unchanged from the previous photo.

IF YOU CAN EASILY CHANGE YOUR SCREEN BRIGHTNESS, YOU MIGHT OPTIMIZE IT
FOR THE BEST VIEWING. It can make a big difference.

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

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

19_02-04_Feb_Apr_TX.exe

for Windows users, and the equivalent in .zip format for Mac users. 
This email is also repeated there in .txt format.

Remember, these large files may take several minutes to download if you
do not have a very fast download speed. 

...................... 

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)

press 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

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