Photos from a Short Trip to the Olympic Peninsula

We just returned from a short trip to the Olympic Peninsula.  My original goal was to photograph the Sooty grouse, which was apparently known as the Blue grouse when I last photographed it using a camera with much less resolution than I now have.  The birds were near the end of the road on Hurricane Ridge.  This year a volunteer at the desk told me they were very rare... he had seen only one all season.  I secretly scoffed at his assessment... on my last trip the grouse had been as numerous as chickens in a barnyard.  It turned out he was right... I saw not a single grouse despite a long walk through the same area. 

So I didn't meet my goal but I wasn't disappointed in some of my other discoveries.  I found a couple of nice White-crowned sparrows near the Keystone ferry terminal and numerous Rhinoceros Auklets off a pier in Port Townsend. 

I'm still wrestling with using Adobe Lightroom but seem to be making progress.  I think I can improve on the auklet processing but need a little advice.  I'm still trying to come to terms with the cataloging and labeling aspects of the software.  The camera (Nikon D300S) and lens (Nikon 200-400mm) are operating beautifully and I'm constantly amazed at the quality of the camera/lens combination.