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 !

The slow return of spring & a nest box update !

Brad and Myself (Brendan) have been blocked with building nest boxes and other nesting structures so far this spring. We are expecting the return of tree swallows by the end of this week or early next week so we are in a rush to get the boxes up and ready to go. There is a lot more work in maintaining over some 30 owl boxes and countless tree swallow boxes because every spring we must clean them out and repair ones that people beat up or that naturally rot over time. I also have repaired 2 "hen houses" for black ducks and mallards to nest in. Below are a few shots of hen houses being built and in action.

Also Brad and I were able to get out over the weekend in the rainy weather to check out some of our boxes. Although there are none in our boxes yet, Keith Brown at butterpot park has a male owl hanging around one of his boxes so, now we wait to see if he will find a female !
Below is a short video we took on the lower salmonier line while checking boxes.

You can expect to see some bird pictures in the upcoming week of some new migrants and maybe a review of my NEW canon 300mm f2.8 is L usm ii. We will also try to do a review of the Jobu Jr3 Gimbal Head that both Brad and I use.

 

Junco Taken at Nevilles Pond

 

 One of many Wigeon at Nevilles Pond


Osprey Nest in Terrenceville where we have a photography blind setup

Also this weekend we are making our annual trip to the famous Cape St.Marys Ecological Reserve for some shots of horned larks, gannets, kitty wakes, murres and maybe caribou ! Stay tuned, spring has arrived.