Our biggest hummer, the Rivoli’s is perhaps our most striking. This young one is still growing out its adult plumage but it gives you a hint of the glory that’s coming. It’s just stunning.

These photos were taken with a simple rig as the hummer freely come and go to the feeder. The dual flash is reflected off all that color which is why we can see it. And while technology has made it so much easier, it still takes time to get the frame. Them suckers are fast! And it’s only two months old!

Life is one continuing lesson and for Kodiak Brown Bears, those lessons are really concentrated in the first 3-4 years. Mom spends as much time sharing the right thing to do as much as the wrong thing. The process has always fascinated me as the lessons can be literally, life or death or as simple as, don’t eat or play with that. Mom is at one time the most affectionate, playful parent you can ever imagine. And the next moment, incredibly harsh! She concentrates into those brief years where to find food in May, June, July etc, the different plants, fish and the like. Shares with them what’s fun to play with and what will kill them and to be afraid of. The whole time, she is their great protector those first years, as fierce a protector as they will ever find. Then in their late third or fourth year summer after learning all there is to learn about their home, mom rudely and at times nastily tells them to go away and to go make their own home somewhere else! It’s a circle of life and it fascinates me. I’m ever so grateful they permit me to peak in and witness it all, allowing my camera to capture some of the moments.

If you’re interested on feet on the ground, lens time with Kodiak Browns, we have one opening in our sixth trip to Kodiak in May, 2024. If you want to see if you are made of the right stuff, give Sharon a call 406 .240 .3503 to see if you’re a fit!

Like species such as the Bald Eagle, Northern Gannets don’t have their adult plumage until year four and later. They pair for life and start nesting after age four. Their plumage is variable until then (see below). Avian flu went through the Cape Mary Bird Ecological Reserve in 2022 like wildfire killing 20-40% of the 40,000 Gannets. “The Beach was covered with carcasses” the biologist told me. With the mortality rate, this year a number of “younger” birds paired up and were stepping up with the older birds now missing would have been breeder. How this will turn out only time will tell.

Above is the one individual I really loved to photograph, who I called “Piano Keys” because of the pattern on its wings. It’s a three to four year old. Almost is pure white. Below you will see the various age classes with two year old on far left, three year old, 3-4 year old and 4-20 year old on far right. Once they leave the nest, they “crash” land into the ocean where their flight instruction begins. They survival after that is pretty certain, unless of natural disaster strikes. But like all, experience counts for a lot of that longevity, you could simply say, better with age.

 

Perched on the point looking straight down the four hundred foot cliff, peering through the fog at the Atlantic below, I was incredibly excited! When I started out decades ago pursuing my passion for birds, I studied Peterson’s Guide to North American Birds every night. Every night! There was one bird that stood out as just cool, one I wanted to see but never thought I would, the Razorbill. A pelagic bird that only comes to shore to breed, it was nowhere I could ever imagine being. On this morning, I was told there was one pair present in the fog. One pair amongst literally 40,000 birds on the rocky cliffs. What were the odds of seeing it? What were the odds of getting glass on it? No matter, all the other birds took a background in my stare.

Then, literally within minutes there was the pair! Two Razorbills on a ledge, their nest platform (they use rock for a nest). Over the next five days we came to find there are approximately 1600 Razorbills nesting at Cape Mary Bird Ecological Reserve but the vast majority of them are around the corner where we cannot get to. That didn’t matter to me because as I always say when it comes to bird photography, it just take one! Nesting season is in full swing which means lots of activity. The nest you see below is the only nest site we could see, but there were at least three others below our feet tucked in on the cliff we were standing on. We could see them fly in and then vanish below our feet so we knew they were there but we couldn’t see them.

Then one afternoon one blessed us by perching for a very short period on a point of rock right in front of us (the photo above). My dear friend Eric brought back a much better shot than I did of this moment but I was over the moon just seeing a Razorbill so close and intimate. Even though it was for just a few minutes, it’s what keeps me going out in search of species I would love to see and photograph. It’s so well worth the 40 years!

“No photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of the subject,” or your own! This has been my mantra from day one. It’s what took me down the road delving into learning more and more and more about the subjects I want to photograph. Grizzly & Kodiak Brown Bears are an amazing critter with an incredibly fascinating biology that I have been a student of for nearly thirty years. One never become an expert or is 100% correct when seeing critters actions, behavior, and know what they are going to do next. This is part of the field craft wildlife photographers need to learn along with f/stops and shutter speeds. It all goes hand in hand! It all takes time.

“Don’t get between a mother bear and her cubs” is good advice for sure but this doesn’t mean you can’t be amongst them as they go about their daily travels. The tides on Kodiak Island rule all activity, bears and human. The grass flats in which we are standing in about another thirty minutes would all be underwater. Bears have no problem swimming. Photographers with long glass, yeah they need a boat. We’d been with this family for quite a while, the rising tide slowly moving them in our direction. We didn’t approach them one foot, they came to us. That means they were doing it on their terms so they were comfortable with our being there. The most important thing, I realized the path they wanted to take to leave the flats and go up the hill during high tide. We left that path clear so they could comfortably do just that. And that’s what that look is all about. The ears are forward, the eyes wide open, the gate was slowly and easy. Mom was saying basically, “all good, we’re walking past, stay where you are and all will be good.” And so it was. You can see at the top of the landing page the video of their passing. They were fifteen feet or so away when they slid into the river and moved over to the other side and up the hillside. That was a que to get in the boats and float back to the lodge. We got the shots, the cub were nursed high and dry and life moved forward. That’s what that look meant.

They were there last year. They were there the year before. They were this year and as soon as I saw them the trigger flipped in my mind. I am often asked if there are species I want to photograph that I hadn’t yet. The Harlequin Duck is one I have photographed but not very well (suckie actually) and not for a very long time. They are incredibly shy and take either a water approach or time to make the shot. And if you don’t catch them in their spring finery, then what’s the point. As you can see, the drake is a spectacular bird!

A couple of weeks back when I was on Kodiak I saw a pair in this one location below camp the first morning. Birds and bees were in the air which gave me a fighting chance to get close physically. When love is in the air, birds tend to ignore us. The first morning they didn’t show up. The second morning it was gray skies and I settled for Black Oystercatchers (ok, they are a cool bird too!). The third morning the light was decent but there were no birds. I waited there on the shore with the Z 8 / Z600f4 in hand for twenty minutes or so (I shot all handheld). Then the pair splashed in right in front of me. Within another fifteen minutes there were twenty of them and I was in heaven making some shots I long waited for. It was one of those moments when until I had them in the viewfinder I had forgotten just how much I wanted to photograph them. One of many long lost personal desires.