A large chunk of ice cracked off of Victoria glacier causing a mini avalanche. The noise of the ice cracking travelled down the mountain giving me just enough time to fire off some photos as the slab crumbled against the rocks.
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The last remnants of a winter coat cling to the neck and sides of this wolf as he makes his way along the rocky banks of a river.
With only small amounts of snow remaining on the mountain peaks, wolves become even more like ghosts of the forest during the summer. Coming across them is always, to some extent based on luck and usually the glimpses are very fleeting.
With the sunlight trickling through the trees I only had a few seconds to steady my camera and get this photograph before it disappeared back into the dense understory of the bush. Such remarkable and elusive creatures!
I was recently a naturalist with Classic Canadian Tours to the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary on the North coast of B.C. The park is the largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world, can only be accessed by boat or float plane and was specifically set aside to protect grizzly bears and their habitat. About 50 grizzly bears call this park home, which is the about the same number that live in all of Banff National Park. That may not sound impressive at first, but the Khutzeymateen is 16 times smaller in area than Banff! As such it has one of the highest concentrations of grizzly bears in North America and if you time it just right the bears are on almost every beach that you come across.
They come down to the huge estuary almost everyday at low tide from late-spring to mid-summer to feast on crabs, clams, sedgegrass and whatever else they stumble upon. In the 2 hours we were in the park we came across 7 grizzly including a mom and cub that play fought along the shore as we watched from the boat! On the way to and from the park we also saw breaching humpback whales that had just started to return from the north to feed on the abundant herring, lounging harbor seals, stellar sea lions, bald eagles fishing for the salmon and countless other coastal bird life. It was an incredible day of wildlife viewing!
To give you an idea of the habitat I chose this photo of the rainforest and one of the many rivers feeding into the estuary. A grizzly bear appeared at the edge of the river and seemed to be checking it out for any returning salmon. In a few weeks the bears will be farther inland feasting on all the spawning, dead and decaying salmon trying to put on as much fat as possible for their long winter sleep. A truly very unique place.
If you are interested in seeing the Khutzeymateen but can’t afford to be away for very long or the expense of a multi-day trip, Classic Canadian Tours has day tours from both Calgary and Edmonton that are sure to sell out again in 2014. Dates will be announced soon so stay tuned!
A bald eagle cries out as it effortlessly soars through the air near Prince Rupert, B.C. Once back home, with the help of Photoshop I created this image by keeping the eagle in colour while making the rest of the image black and white. I love the eye-catching effect is has and it turns the image into something more like art than traditional wildlife photography. Sometimes it’s nice to do things a bit differently! Please click on the image for the full size and let me know what you think!
With its razor sharp talons firmly grasped around the flimsy top of a sapling, a great grey owl intensely scans and listens for any unsuspecting prey.
A round trip migration of over 12000 km, a heart rate of 1200 beats/minute, a wing beat rate of 3000-3700 beats/minute, having to go into torpor every evening to survive the long cold nights. Hummingbirds are about as close to mythical that exists in the bird world. I have held them in my hands, felt the vibrations of their little hearts beating and marveled at how something so small and fragile can survive, but it’s still hard to believe they can eek out a living in the harsh environment of the Canadian Rockies. Until this year I had never seen an active nest in the wild. So to say I was ecstatic when, with a bit of help, I came across this one would be a bit of an understatement!
Hummingbird nests, which in themselves are works of art, are constructed with the soft silk of spider webs! Imagine how many spider webs are needed to make a nest like this? It was placed on a thin drooping branch that wouldn’t support the weight of any potential predators (crows, squirrels, martens, etc.). It was woven around the branches and then lichen and moss were attached to the outside to provide camouflage. As is typical, 2 eggs the size of small jellybeans were laid and incubated for just over 2 weeks. The chicks grow at an exponential rate and within 19 days they fledge, fly off with mom and never return to the nest again.
When I came across this one, the chicks were already about 1.5 weeks old and had tiny pin feathers. Contrary to what many believe, hummingbirds don’t rely on nectar to feed their young. The rapidly growing chicks need a high protein diet so they are almost exclusively fed insects. This is why in early summer if you have a hummingbird feeder you won’t see females at it. They return to the feeders later in the summer with their fully grown offspring to teach the young about the best feeding spots. This lasts all but a few days at which point the offspring are self-sufficient.
Watching a hummingbird can be dizzying, not to mention painful from all of the mosquito bites, and while I wish I could say I planned to get this photo, simply put, I didn’t nor could I have imagined it possible given the conditions! The light was low, the nest was well hidden, multiple small branches were getting in the way and as you know these birds do everything at warp speed. I knew the only way I was ever going to have a chance at being successful was if the sun’s rays found a break in the trees to penetrate into the forest and if I set my camera up on a tripod and manually focused on the nest. With the settings locked in I stepped back from the camera with my remote in hand to take in the action from a distance so I didn’t disturb them. After a few minutes the sun was low enough to get through the dense canopy and light up the area around the nest. Now all I needed was for the mom to come back and feed her babies.
Luck was on my side. She flew in and started plunging food down the throats of her chicks. After feeding them she would usually zoom off into the surrounding meadows to catch more food, but this time she did something different. She flew up from the nest but remained hovering right next to it in the beautiful soft light of the sun! I was too far away to see what she was looking at so instead I clicked the remote as fast as possible hoping I would get one good photo of her in flight. The whole sequence lasted less than two seconds but I managed to snap off a few frames that were in focus. It wasn’t until afterwards when I zoomed in on the images that I saw what she was so intent on. Under the watchful eyes of her chicks she had spotted and caught a spider! If you look at this photo closely you can see one of the legs of the unsuspecting spider in her beak just before she clamped down on it! The spider tried to get away by hiding behind the branch but it was no match for the hummingbird and was quickly snapped up and eaten!
While I have other images of the mom and her chicks, none tells the story of the life of this hummingbird family as well as this one! The background and shadows are a bit distracting but this photo is still to date my favourite photo of the year. I hope you like it as much as I do!
Imagine having to eating 2-3 times your body weight in food every day just to survive! That if you have a bad day of not finding enough food you are going to starve to death! Hummingbirds push the limits and live their lives on the edge. No wonder people rarely see them doing anything but eating.
Their incredibly high metabolic rate means that the only way they can survive the long nights without eating is to go into a form of hibernation, called torpor. Every night they lower their body temperature to prevent wasting energy trying to keep their internal temperature at around 38 degrees Celsius. Their heart rate slows to as low as 50 beats per minute (from over 800-1200) and respiratory rates are not detectable. Simply put they appear to be dead. A few hours before dawn they have an internal alarm clock that goes off that awakens them from this suspended animation. At this point they fluff themselves up, start to shiver and beat their wings. This generates enough heat to increase their body temperature a few degrees a minute. Total time to awaken from torpor takes about 20-60 minutes. If they have budgeted their energy reserves well, once awake they have just enough energy to fly off and find their first meal of the day. Now try to imagine how much they need to eat to raise 2-3 chicks!
This photo is of a female rufous hummingbird after coming back from a successful feeding trip to feed her two rapidly growing chicks (photos to come down the road). She took a quick break to rest during a chilly morning in the Rockies.
Two young of year black bears check to make sure the coast is clear before running off to catch up with mom.
It took a bit of luck and a lot of patience but eventually I got a few pictures of this dragonfly (I believe it’s a paddle tailed darner) that I was happy with.
Just like a kid (or a big kid) trying to balance themselves while walking along the railway tracks or a parking rail, this 3 year old grizzly seemed to prefer to move between feeding sites by sauntering along a bunch of dead-fall trees than following his siblings through the grass.
With the Bow river discoloured brown and already bursting at the seams from all the runoff, a new storm built up and rumble over the Rocky Mountains. I had about 10 minutes before I was engulfed in the thunderstorm, which gave me just enough time to set up my gear and safely get a few photos of the clouds and lightning strikes off in the distance. As luck would have it this strike happened in the perfect spot for my composition. Not wanting to push my luck, I packed up my gear and ran for my car as the clouds opened up above me.
I don’t get down to Waterton as much as I would like these days but when I do make the trip it is always special. Having spent lots of time there in the past, I have certain spots I like to revisit to see if the wildlife is still following the same rhythms. Even though much of the park was closed due to the recent flooding I wasn’t disappointed when we came across the huge flock of cliff swallows I have been watching for a few years now. I took this photo with a 12-24mm wide angle lens so that gives you an idea of how close the birds get. It felt like I was in the middle of their flock and they didn’t seem concerned in the least by our presence, often times hovering only a few feet away as the strong winds blew through the mountain passes.
The strong winds were perfect for the swallows to use to hover above the water in search of insects. I used the opportunity to try to get a few close-ups of them in flight. Not an easy feat even when they are close-by and cooperative.
This one is my favourite of the close-ups. It clearly shows the aerodynamic profile of the wings and how the birds use their tail feathers to help stabilize and steer themselves through the air.
I’m in the danger zone taking this picture but thankfully none of the swallows took issue with me and I made it out no worse for wear!
Two big horn sheep emerge from the fog to make their way up the aptly named Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, Montana.
Owen Slater Photography 