Hi everyone,



Trisha and I just got back from a multiple week trip that mostly was centered around Victor, Idaho (just west over Teton Pass from Jackson, Wyoming).? Although the trip was not specifically a birding venture, w e got to see a number of species that are relatively common there but not so common in western Washington.? Raptors were probably the highlight, with multiple Swainson's Hawks, and the?best find of the trip ?- a Ferruginous Hawk.?? ?We also saw ?Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier, Osprey and plenty of Red-tailed Hawks of course.? One morning I came across two Sandhill Cranes, strolling through a wet meadow quite close to the road.? A couple pictures are at http://www.tubbsphoto.com/-/tubbsphoto/detail.asp?LID=&photoID=13119156&cat=38973 ?- click next for the second photo.? The birds were close enough that these shots were taken with a digicam from the car window.?



As a related item, we toured (twice) the National Museum of Wildlife Art, located just north of Jackson on the road to Yellowstone.? It is a spectacular museum if you are at all into wildlife (and some landscape) art.? We were particularly lucky this visit, as they were featuring the work of Carl Runguis, with two rooms dedicated to his work.? Particularly of interest were his small on-site (plein air) oil sketches of landscapes, which were amazing in themselves, but the exhibit also showed the larger works that relied on the sketches so you could see what sparked the idea, what changes were made between the outside sketches and the finished studio piece.? The museu m also had a room of Bob Kuhn's work, and there were multiple pleasant surprises lurking about in the other rooms and halls - including two small Bierstadts, totally unlike the huge landscapes he is famous for.? There were two Robert Bateman?paintings (one a raven, the other a huge bison), a Maynard Dixon piece, and an antelope skull by Georgia O'Keefe.? And only a $10 entry fee if, like us, you are 'seniors'.?



John Tubbs

Snoqualmie, WA

johntubbs at comcast.net