Falling for the Marsh Wren

In the Spring of 2019, I spent a little over a month with a family of Burrowing Owls. There was something about these birds that made me want to devote the time to documenting the pairing-off, mating, birth and rearing of the young. From the very first picture of one of these owls that I had seen years before, I knew that this was a creature I would fall in love with.

This Spring, I had no particular species in mind and followed the whims of the weather and my personal schedule to photograph any and everything that I could as I reacquainted myself with my home state. In the process of this, I found myself with a new love affair (sorry Owls). On a cold morning in early Spring, I was walking in my local wetland sanctuary and found what I later determined to be Marsh Wren nests in the reeds. With curiosity piqued, I started to go out of my way to visit this nest each time I was at the wetlands to see the progress of the nest, if any. You can imagine the joy I felt when I finally captured images of the young a few weeks later! Since that day, I have continued to visit the nesting area and photograph the Wren family.

What a peculiar little bird! Known to bee normally quite shy, this one particular male would climb the highest reeds and sing its heart out. He must feel very safe here as normal behavior is for them to sing from the bottom of the reed stalks, only coming up to look for predators. I just had to take advantage of this and have since spent many mornings going to visit my little Wren friends. This is a collection of my favorite images from these adventures.

Be sure to click on each image to see it in its intended crop.

On disappointment

Have you ever had a day that you came home without a single photograph to put into your portfolio? Have you ever come home without a single photograph? If you are anything like me, the answer is yes… a lot.

I am here to tell you today that this is NORMAL. Often times we get all ramped up, go to the perfect location at the perfect time of day and nothing happens. It happens to all of us, even the pros. In fact, I think it happens more to pros because they are out there everyday (at least I tell myself that to feel better).

So what do we do when this happens? I mean, if you spend enough time doing photography this will happen to you eventually. Well, I personally like to reflect on why I went out in the first place. Did I spend all this time and energy so that I could add another image to my collection or did I do it for the love of being outdoors and listening to what nature is trying to tell me.

You see, as they say, it is all about the experience, not the destination. I can’t think of an area where that is truer than in photographing animals in their natural environment. Whether I come home with an image is beside the point. I do this because I love being outside, reminding myself of where we all came from. This is my time to reconnect with nature and feel it healing me with every minute that I am in it.

I think that we too often get wrapped up in the ends and sometimes ignore the means. Why did you become a wildlife photographer in the first place? If it was to get cracking shots all the time then why didn’t you go into portrait work? You did because you love nature just like I do. I think it is important to remember that sometimes, especially on those days that we come home with nothing.

Understanding animal behavior and it’s role in getting great images

Welcome back everyone. I want to talk a little bit about animal behavior. As wildlife photographers, it is vital to do your research to get a firm grasp of the types of behavior certain animal’s display. Not only will this help you to get better images, but it will keep you much safer.

Why is this important? Say you want to photograph bears in the Grand Tetons but don’t have a good idea of how they act. This could be a very dangerous photo trip! Knowing when a bear is becoming agitated is paramount to a safe photography experience.

Let’s take it down a notch and talk about birds for a moment. There are several things that I watch for when I am out. First is to understand the food source for the particular species as well as any territorial issues that they may exhibit. For example, there are birds that don’t build their own nests but take over others that are already built. Wouldn’t that be a great shot?

Birds in general will always take off and land into the wind, knowing this will help you position yourself in the right place for an amazing photo. Oftentimes, they will also relieve themselves, just seconds before taking off. If you see this, put your finger on the shutter release!

There are also subtle things to watch for that vary with species. The only way to learn about these is to spend the time in the field watching. There is really no substitute for witnessing this behavior. Animals are individuals, just like humans and if we treat them as such, we can see that they may act in a certain way, or not, that won’t be found in any books.

One example that I can illustrate my point is that of Bald Eagle behavior around a large vs small food source. I saw this firsthand while photographing them in Seabeck, Washington this summer. What I noticed is that when food is plentiful, the Eagles will take part in their normal behavior of stealing food, but they also actively hunt the little fish from the shallow waters. As the food source dries up, they become much more aggressive toward each other, often fighting in an amazing display to keep themselves fed. I used this knowledge for the next five days as the food continued to run out, myself capitalizing on the opportunity to photograph the fight.

I also came to see very quickly that just before a fight began, an Eagle would take to the sky and circle a few times, getting it’s bearing on whomever currently had a fish. Once selected, the airborne Eagle would come swooping in with talons extended as a show of force! Typically, the Eagle on the ground would then defend itself by throwing itself into the air, often upside down to meet the aggressors’ talons with its own. This makes for a truly captivating image.

You can clearly see that there is a huge advantage to understanding animal behavior and how it relates to our photography. I encourage you, once you find a particular animal that you would like to photograph, take the time and spend the hours with it in the field. Get a feel for its habits and everything that makes it an individual. I guarantee that this will increase your hit rate and possibly add a few new images to your portfolio.

In Search of Eagles: Part one

My friend Keith and I headed to the Washington coast to find and photograph the beautiful Bald Eagle. We both came back with a few keepers but the experience itself was priceless.

When I was a boy, it was a good month if you saw one Bald Eagle. This is a testimony to how powerful conservation efforts can be in restoring the natural habitat and bringing endangered species back from the brink. The Bald Eagle, originally numbering above 500,000 breeding pairs, had its numbers decimated in the 50’s and 60’s due to the use of the pesticide DDT. Through focused conservation, their numbers are rebounding and we are able to once again enjoy their presence on this incredible planet.

When I wasn’t photographing, I was filming and this short documentary is made available for you here but can also be found on my youtube channel. I hope you enjoy!

Using eBird for finding a shooting location

eBird, an online platform run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is one of the best resources for aspiring bird photographers. It isn’t terribly difficult to use but it does have a minor learning curve. Let’s go over some of the best ways to use this website to find the bird species or general location that you are interested in.

I usually have an idea of what bird I am interested in photographing before I begin so this first section is focused on the best way to use eBird to find a particular species.

This is particularly helpful when you already have an idea of the location that you want to focus on and have just one species that you are after.

First, on the main page of eBird, we want to click on the explore tab.

First, click on the EXPLORE tab in the top left corner.

Under the heading “MORE WAYS TO EXPLORE”, click on “SPECIES MAP”.

On this page, we have two areas to input information. The first is the location. In the right info box, type the general location that you are photographing in. Next, type the name of the species you are looking for in the “SPECIES” info box on the left. In this example, I have put in a location close to me and am searching specifically for the Bald Eagle.

Once you have input this information, you will see sighting bubbles populate the map. If you don’t see any, try zooming out or widening your search. In this example though, we can see that the search returned plenty of results. Bubbles in blue show historical sightings while the red bubbles show sightings that have happened recently with multiple reports from several individuals. I like to keep my search to the red bubbles as many birds are seasonal and we want to know if they are present right now.

To further explore the information that eBird has to offer, lets click one of the red bubbles. First, lets zoom in a bit to really get an idea of how many sightings have happened in this area.

Red bubbles with a fire symbol indicate a sighting hotspot. If present, I always click on these.

Notice that we are now seeing a list of sightings within the single bubble. Lets click on the entry with 32 Eagles counted by the poster.

This final screen shows us other species that this poster has reported from this location on this date. This is really useful to get an idea of the general diversity of this location.

What if we aren’t looking for a particular species? I often go out to locations that I know will have a lot of diversity but with no particular species in mind. This tool is also really good for that! In this case, we want to go back to our original “EXPLORE” page. On the bottom right, you will find a link that says “EXPLORE HOTSPOTS”. That’s what we want!

On the “EXPLORE” main page, click on “EXPLORE HOTSPOTS”.

Now we are presented with a heat-map of reported sightings. Feel free to explore this map as you will often find locations that are great for photography that you didn’t know about. For our example, we are going to stick with the same location as above.

Again, in the style of a heat-map, we see that there are several sighting areas that people have reported from. From here, you are free to zoom in to more specific locations or to look for bubbles with a high number of species observed.

At this point, the results of clicking on a bubble will look just like in our previous example.

As you can see, finding what you are looking for on eBird isn’t difficult at all. The main page can be a little overwhelming but I hope that this article helps you navigate through that and gets you out into the field, and more importantly, coming home with some great shots in the bag!

A word or two on gear; does it matter?

Spend any amount of time on photography forums and you will undoubtedly come across people arguing over whether the gear you use matters. Does it, or does it come down to the skill of the photographer?

The is a heavily debated topic but hopefully I can lend some clarity to the situation. Have you ever watched any of the “pro with 35 dollar camera vs. amateur with 6000 dollar camera: Who will win?” videos? They matter to this argument.  Nearly every time I’ve gotten sucked in to one of these videos, I have noticed that the outcome is usually the same.  The pro wins.

There is a lot to be said about experience and there are so many facets to photography that make up a great photograph than the gear.  Professional photographers have a much deeper bag of trips to reach into when making an image.

So does this mean that gear doesn’t matter.  Of course not.  Have you seen what a portrait taken with an 85mm f/1.4 from Canon compared to the same focal length Rokinon? The rendering of out of focus areas are different, the color reproduction is different, even the sharpness can be different.  Or if this is too close for a comparison, what about tripods?  What is the difference between a 200 dollar Manfrotto compared to a 1300 dollar Gitzo?  A tripod is a tripod, right?  Nope.  The materials, connecting hardware and overall stability is different (I have a whole article on tripods coming soon). 

Tripods are a great example of “buy once, cry once”. I went through three tripods like the Manfrotto on the left before finally investing in the Gitzo that you see on the right. The Gitzo has been a rock solid performer now for 8 years.

Personally, I like to use long telephotos as an example because I feel they best illustrate the point.  How does a 200-600mm f/4.5 to f/5.6 compared to a 600mm f/4 if they are both used at 600mm?  The difference is dramatic.  From the speed of the 600 prime to the build and optical quality, there really is no comparison.  You CAN see this difference in images but more importantly, the 600mm, aside from being heavy performs exceptionally well under a wider variety of lighting conditions and in some cases, will have better weather sealing for days in inclement weather. 

One final example that needs to be mentioned is something that recently happened to me. See, I have been in the transition to mirrorless for the past year and during that time I sold my beloved Nikon D5 professional body. I have been shooting primarily with the Z7ii and Z6ii for my daily work. Three weeks ago, I went to a place on the Hood Canal in Washington state to photograph Bald Eagles. This particular event, which I will describe in a separate article only happens once a year and lasts just four weeks. My weapon of choice was the Z7ii and 600mm f/4 with a 1.4x teleconverter to really gain some reach. After over 2000 shots, I came home very disappointed. Out of those, only around 400 were acceptably sharp and less than 100 I would call critically sharp. Compared to my old D5, this was unacceptable. While I do have the new pro Z9 on order, I expect it to take up to a year to have in my possession so I bit the bullet last week and purchased a used D6. On my first outing, which was just to get used to the autofocus system, I can home with 294 shots. Want to know how many I would consider were critically sharp? 275. What a difference in hit rate.

It isn’t that the Z7ii is a bad camera. In fact, it’s exceptional for what it was designed to do. What it wasn’t designed for, however, is what I needed. The D6 checks all those boxes and I expect the Z9 to be even better. Do you need a D6 or Z9? No. But if you are a wildlife photographer shooting Nikon, these two cameras are the right tool for the job, not the Z7ii. So in this case, for me, the gear really does matter.

My point here is that both camps in this matter are right; and their both wrong.  Gear does matter based on the job you are trying to get done but there is no substitute for experience and knowing how to properly use your gear. 

Nature, from A to Z

I will be writing articles that document my trips to the field, the things that I learn about the animals I spend time with and their habitats.