Diving Duck Mission

One of the big advantages here on the island in the winter is that we have a large numbers of diving ducks that make their way to our local ponds. Upon first arrival they spend most of their time in the middle of the ponds/lakes way out of reach for any photos. As winter creeps in the ponds begin to freeze pushing them closer to shore. Once this happens their behaviour is much different. They quickly become more confident at the presence of humans and look for any hand outs of food.
At the beginning of this year we had hoped for a few days of very cold weather and no wind which would freeze up the ponds before the snow came. This would allow us to get some shots of the divers in calm water with beautiful reflections of the foliage around. Once the snow comes the reflects will change and you will end up with alot of white in your images. Below are some shots we've gotten so far this year

 Female Greater Scaup

 Female Greater Scaup

 Male Tuffed Duck

 Male Tuffed Duck

Male Greater Scaup,  this was taken recently after we had snow. See how the colors have changed in these two photos compared to the rest

 Male Tuffed duck

Common Mergansers have been eluding us for some time. This winter we are going to try and use decoys and all white clothes to hopefully blend in more with the snow. We will be sure to include some photos of when we do that!

Eruption of snowy owls = Eruption of Excitement!

Over the last month or so there has been a major influx of snowy owls to the southeast coast of Newfoundland. The latest observations were numbering well over 100 and for birders and photographers alike there is a lot of excitement!

Snowy owls being the large raptors they are consume mostly rodents but in situations like this one they are likely to eat just about anything. One reason people think they may have come down from their high arctic habitats to Newfoundland is because the lemming population may be low this winter. Hopefully they find enough food. If they are willing to eat seagulls they will be fine for a LONG time around st.Johns. 

                                        
The sheer size and power of these big birds is amazing, when they lift off their massive feet hang bellow them like the landing gear on an air plane! This morning Brad and I were back at the cape. It was a great morning the sun was shining the air was cold and the snowy owl population at the cape had grown to a total of 13. When I crested one of the ridges along the east coast trail leading away from the cape all I could see were white dots along the barrens and each one was a snowy owl. I took my time and worked my way along the boardwalk watching for any owls that might be nestled down close to the trail sometimes one or even two would glide past me only a couple or feet off the ground and perch on a near by rock or hump. It really was a morning I will never forget.

                      

The picture above I captured as I crested one of the hills and happened to notice three owls drinking from a small pond. By the time I was near enough to get a half decent shot two of them had left but this one stayed and I watched it for four or five minutes as it drank and called to other near by owls.

With Christmas fast approaching you can expect to see a post about what the best gifts are for your photography enthusiast! And brad will share with you his Diving Duck Mission.

Winter has arrived 

Cape St.Marys Ecological Reserve!

As promised, Brad and I (Brendan) headed to Cape St.Marys for our annual spring trip to photograph some sea birds and horned larks. When we arrived at the cape (7:30) we got out of the car and it was similar to being in a wind tunnel.....WINDY! we had hoped for no rain or fog and lucky enough there was not any rain or fog but be had not planned on gale force winds... We had planned to use our Kiwk camo blinds and my Bluetooth speaker to photograph the Horned larks but we knew that the wind would simply blow our blinds away and with so much wind the larks probably couldn't hear the speaker anyways. But we did get a couple shots, not the quality we were hoping for but at least its something !

After we scraped the idea of photographing larks we headed over to bird rock which as you can see from the picture below is home to hundreds of nesting gannets for the next few months. The over cast day was the type of lighting we needed to get the exposures of the white birds just right.

 

 

              While at the cape we were able to see multiple birds of prey including many eagles, a peregrine falcon and what we believe to be a Gyrfalcon ! With such a concentration of nesting birds its easy to see why these raptors would hang around for an easy meal !

Me and brad have seen numerous pictures of gannets and their colonies but we tried to get something "different" and unique so we tried a lot of different angles.

Later this upcoming week we will do a video review on the tripod head, the Jobu Jr Gimbal head ! and maybe our Kwik camo blinds !