First box build of the year!

So far 11 boreal owl boxes are ready to be placed just 2 days into the building process. The goal this season is somewhere around the  40-50+ range. The boxes we build out of 10"x48" boards of knotty pine. We use black painted screws so they do not rust and we place the screws so the front is able to hinge open for cleaning and check-ups. This season we have tried a slightly smaller design which allows us to make more boxes. The dimensions  of our boxes this season are as follows:


Back- 20"
Top- 12"
Sides(3)- 16"
Bottom- 7.5"

                                           

The hole size we use is roughly 4" but you can make them slightly smaller if you don't have a 4" circular saw or a jig-saw.

                                   

The finishing touches on our boxes consist of sanding down the entrance hole and pre-drilling some holes to attach the box to a tree as this is hard to do when your twenty feet up a tree. Finally we add 3-4 inches of wood shavings (NOT sawdust) and that's it, the box is ready to be placed.
When we go to place our boxes we do so always before the end of march because by that time the owls are already searching for nest sites. Look for thick stands of trees with openings or cut-overs near by which is where the owls will most likely hunt. We try and place our boxes as high up as we can but in our first few years we had most of our boxes fairly close to the ground 7-8 feet. This year we are aiming to get the boxes 10-15 feet up as we think it may increase the chances occupancy.

                                  

So far we have 22 boxes out across the island so if all goes as planed we can build more then that this season.

We would like to thank the many people who help manage or observe our boxes for us in the provincial parks and also people who have suggested sites to place boxes. Let's make this the season we get some action in our boxes!

Below are a few shots of some resident Common Goldeneye in CBS, they seldom come close enough for interesting images but i like the look of these.

It's building time again!

Just a quick upload of a few boreal owl boxes. These are just the tip of the iceberg. 

February: A month of preparations

February for Brad and i is looking like a month of preparing for upcoming ideas and projects.
Yesterday we headed to Butterpot Provincial Park to set-up a feeding station in the hopes of photographing some boreal species such as the Northern-Three toed woodpecker or Boreal Chickadees. The resident park ranger Keith is going to keep a eye to our feeders and report to us if he gets anything of interest. Yesterday when we were setting up the new feeders birds were already taking to them and feeding. Thus far (1 day) there are juncos, black-capped chickadees, american goldfinch and pine siskins!

In addition to the seed feeders we set-up we also placed out some suet for woodpeckers like Northern Flicker, Downy and Hairy woodpeckers and possibly Northern Three-toed Woodpeckers. Now its just having patience and waiting for something good to show up to our little buffet in the woods.

After we got everything placed and set-up at Butterpot, we headed to Quidi Vidi Lake. 

Nothing new to report from the lake besides the nice Female Ring neck duck that has shown up. Other then that we got a few photos of the resident tufted ducks and Scaup. The peregrine was happily eating a starling in a near by tree and an otter made a short appearance and flushed almost everything in the pond. 

A beautiful drake Tufted Duck

When photographing Waterfowl one thing that i find is VERY important is your point of view. Too often i see people with great gear, probably better then mine shooting standing up; creating regular drab images with mostly water as the background.  I mean thats fine everyone has their own shooting style but for me and brad alike getting eye level with what we are shooting is a must. Even if that means lying in duck droppings, getting in the water or having rocks driving in our knees.

Both the images above and below were shot lying on the ice with our lenses as low as we can get them, the background in both images is a flock of gulls resting on the ice but because i am eye level with my subject the background is then further away allowing my 3000mm F2.8 ii to work its magic and create that nice out of focus blur for the background.

Hen Greater Scaup 

Black-headed Gull

Later this month if all goes well we will begin building nest boxes for this upcoming nesting season. 

Just like in past years we are building boxes for tree swallows and Boreal/Saw-Whet Owls.

Soon we will begin a video series involving reviews on some of the gear we both use and some of our photography techniques 

Winter time = Down time

Winter time on the island of Newfoundland is a slow time for photography and birding alike;
But there is always hope that each winter will be a winter the ivory gulls come down from their northern habitats. Last winter was kind of one of those winters with multiple sightings from across the island but most were very short lived such as the one hour wonder at Quidi Vidi lake which of course neither me or brad seen.

This winter however there have been some things to photograph such as the Purple sandpipers and the regular birds like the sea birds at Cape Spear and as of last week the Peregrine falcon has arrived at Quidi Vidi lake for hopefully the remainder of winter. He or She has been feeding on starlings and pigeons at Quidi Vidi lake before so it seems to be quite comfortable with photographers. Along with the Peregrine a drake Wood duck has arrived at the lake too, adding a bit of colour to the dull days we have been having.

This past saturday Brad and i tried our luck at photographing the resident eagles at Quidi Vidi Lake, with no luck. We arrived at the lake shortly after daylight with 40+ pounds of fresh chicken scraps to entice the birds in close. We got in our quick camo blinds and waited....and waited with no luck. There were 3 juvi eagles on the ice at the time but we think the eagles saw us arrive. Meaning they wanted nothing to do with our hand-outs. The gulls and crows enjoyed it all the same. We will try this technique out again in the near future at a different location. Next time we will be ready before daylight to see if that may have been the problem.

Our idea of doing feeder set-up's for small birds went down the drain when we got a massive dumping of snow. since then ive seen not as much as a single junco at my feeders....

Purple Sandpipers at Cape Spear

Over the weekend brad and i decided to check out the purple sandpipers that winter annually at Cape Spear. When we arrived the sun was just starting to rise so we waited on the icy rocks and tried to spot the flock being flushed from the large waves. After a few minutes we spotted them flying by, and slowly made our way down to the waters edge which was coated in ice created by the salt spray.

The waves are so unpredictable at the cape making it extremely dangerous to shoot there on even good summer days, so what we do to be safer is one of use goes close to the water to shoot while the other is making sure there are no large waves coming and also looking for other birds in the distance such as dovkies, Black gullimonts, Common Eider and long tail ducks all of which we did see!

Its risky but we are extremely cautious and are willing to do what we have to the get the shot. As you can see we got some memorable shots!

This winter hit hard dumping a lot of snow fast, resulting in the birds to move elsewhere for shelter hopefully soon we will have more to share, expect a post about some feeder set-ups we have been thinking of and maybe some eagle close ups?

 

Students On Ice 2012

Early in 2012 i applied for a trip i herd about that takes place in the canadian arctic and ends in greenland. The description  of the trip seemed like a trip of a lifetime. Going on a ship, seeing so many arctic animas and other things it seemed very surreal so i applied and hoped that maybe id be lucky enough to go! 

One of the massive glaciers that stretched into the Arctic Ocean (Greenland)

Sure enough many months later i got a phone call from an unknown number on my cell phone as i was out with some friends, turns out it was clare glasco a lady whom works with SOI and organizes the whole trip. The rest is history.  

A few months later i was all packed up and on my flight to ottawa to meet the team. After a short couple days in ottawa we flew to Iqualit and stayed at the "Haunted" college while we waited for the dense pac ice to blow off shore so we could get to our ship. After 5 days the Canadian Coastguard came and loaded all 124 of us onto barges and we bobbed our way through the ice to their ship where we then sailed out forbisher bay with our ship following behind. Finally in the hours of the night we loaded into zodiacs and were able to get aboard our ship. 

The Deg Groseilliers Coast Guard that helped us to our ship the Acidemic Yoffe    

These Barges were used to get us from land to the Coast Guard ship

Our ship was massive and extremely luxourious, complete with presentation rooms, IMac computers, a library and a dining hall that had 3 course meals ranging from duck to fresh cod caught that day off the ship. All in all it was amazing.  

One thing i did notice is that the birds had already finished breeding and had moved out of the arctic. the only species that were "common" were ravens, gulliemonts, common eider, lapland longspurs and Northern Fulmar. I was very surprised by this and somewhat disappointed as i had imagined something out of a BBC movie of an arctic landscape teeming with breeding shorebirds. 

A Northern Fulmar flying along side our ship was a very common sight

A large river just outside of Iqualit 

The arctic truly is an amazing place with MASSIVE landscapes and extremely friendly and welcoming people. I learned so much on the trip and did so much that it is hard to explain everything without going on and on and on. In the workshops i attended both on and off the ship ranged from glaciers, Inuit culture, sculpting, looking for gems, to even meeting people like the youngest person to reach the summit of everest or the leader of the first all women team to both the south and north pole. 

     Some of the team members board a zodiac as we depart from a land excursion in Greenland

"This was my first time to the arctic but it wont be my last. Currently i have been looking into helping people put bands and geolocaters on birds in the arctic this summer and i have been putting a lot of thought into the idea of going to Antarctica in 2015!"

 

 Geoff Green the founder of Students on Ice speaks to the group in the town of Apex

 Lady Franklin Island in the Davis Straight, This image does not do justice to the sheer mass of this rock outcrop. It was bigger then any land form ive seen before or after. 

Pink flowers surround the crosses in a cemetery in the town of Apex 

The "Arctic swim" as they called it was much more enjoyable for me then the crazy people that actually ventured in the harshly cold water! This was north of Iqualit. 

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!