A Moving Image

Spending more than a decade devoted to watching birds can change a person (well, let’s be honest—all it takes is one quick glimpse). Anyways, I picked up photography simply because I wanted to document the birds I was seeing, and in recent years, it has become quite a passion. Reading Harry Potter can also change a person, however, and this is when I realized pictures could move! I was amazed that the wizarding world had found a way to make this possible. It’s not all that surprising, in retrospect…they’ve managed cooler things. But when I realized muggles had found out about this, and called it “video,” it rocked my world. I now have a DSLR that can capture HD video, and have just begun experimenting with it in earnest.

I’m starting to see that video is like photography, except better in so many ways. It’s also a lot harder to do. You can’t just snap off a bunch of pictures and pick the sharp one later, and crop it to your liking. You have to have the bird’s movements in mind, ideally, even before the bird does. And every minute move you make behind the lens is recorded in your extended composition—the shuffling around of the focus as the bird moves, the panning of the lens, your fingers scuffing about the mic, the tiniest swish of clothes, and your breath breathing. So, with this in mind, I am hoping to gradually acquaint myself with the finer points of this closely related but significantly different technique. And in the meantime, my videos will comprise short clips with poorly controlled audio interspersed with the humbler, kinder medium of days past: photographs¹.

Below is my most recent project, a collage of footage and photos recounting a transition into an unfamiliar summer– a subarctic summer. A summer whose sun never rests for more than a few hours, whose June is still flecked with deep drifts of snow, whose July is clouded with thick masses of mosquitoes, and whose every change is closely paralleled by its wild residents. As the snow melts, revealing vast areas of muddy bogs and leaving open water, Snow Geese pass by the thousands, making whirlwind stops to fuel their northward journey to the high arctic; as the brown and green tones of the tundra are slowly unveiled, Willow Ptarmigans follow suit, molting their snow white feathers in favor of a mottled brown, and stand out awkwardly as their patchy transition trails behind the seamless recession of snow. As temperatures rise and migrant passerines and shorebirds arrive on their breeding grounds, they begin to court and build nests, so as to hatch chicks in accordance with the peak in insect abundance. While the birds are pouring their existence into rearing young, predators take advantage of the propensity of eggs; Parasitic Jaegers descend on incubating birds and fiercely defend future meals from other would-be predators, like Herring Gulls; Red and Arctic Foxes prowl the bogs and tundra, sniffing out meals for their kits. This is the scene that I wanted to capture, on a new level that I have not yet explored, and here is the result:

(HD viewing may only be available by clicking the "youtube" icon in the lower right)

1 Disclaimer– I still, of course, have the utmost respect for photographs and their unique ability to convey a message or an emotion via a still image– they will never be obselete.

King of the Arctic

My heart was pounding and I was frantically (and visibly) shaking with excitement. I simply could not believe what I was seeing– it was so surreal that even now, three days later, I still can’t wrap my head around it. But let’s back up a bit. Let’s imagine I was having an incredible day birding (and this really is conjecture, because I wasn’t). Maybe I was driving down Goose Creek Road, a hotspot in Churchill, and I was lucky enough to see a Red Phalarope, Little Gulls, maybe a flyover Pomarine Jaeger, and then an American Three-toed Woodpecker flew across the road in front of me. Then maybe I made a stop at Cape Merry, an overlook at the Churchill River mouth, and picked out a Black-legged Kittiwake, and– we’ll just go crazy here (why not?)– a Northern Wheatear frolicking on the coastal bluffs. At this point, on my way back along Launch Road to the Studies Centre, I would happily joke that, given my luck, there should be a Gyrfalcon sitting by the side of the road– ideally perched on that lichen-covered rock right there. And then I might be so crazy as to imagine this bird being cooperative for photos, and sitting there on the lichen-covered rock on the Hudson Bay, just minding its own, hard-core Gyr business while I watched to my heart’s content. And then– no, never mind, I wouldn’t even dare to torture myself with imagining it was a white morph.

And this is the point (after another utterly failed attempt to photograph Pacific Loons) where my heart nearly stopped. In fact, had I eaten a Big Mac that day and clogged up my arteries just a bit more, I’m convinced I would have immediately died of cardiac arrest. Because as I glanced over my left shoulder to take yet another casual gaze at the beautiful, hazy blue Hudson Bay, I happened to notice a large, white falcon, sitting aloof on a lichen-covered rock, in a bed of coastal wildflowers, not twenty feet from the road!

I slammed on the brakes (gently, of course) and frantically cranked the window down. I clumsily stuck my lens out the window to grab a quick record, hoping it would stay put for another split second. Then I took another picture, and another. Then I took the time to adjust my awkward, twisted position behind the wheel, and was amazed to see the falcon still watching me, unamused. I slowly got out of the opposite side of the car, crept around to the back, and gradually made my way across the road, settling on my own lichen-covered rock, leaving just enough room in the frame to allow a flight shot, should it suddenly take flight.

In the meantime, my friend Madi had biked up to the falcon as well, and was watching from just a bit down the road. A few cars had slowly driven by, and a few stopped to watch for a few minutes. Despite all of this, the magnificent, white Gyr held his ground, absolutely unfazed. He was unstoppable, he knew it, and it showed. He sat, lifting his talons to clean the large weapons with his bill, watching flies and mosquitoes pass by, and occasionally sizing up one of the eight, young Bald Eagles circling overhead, or maybe one of the heavy Eiders zipping past. To behold this king of the far north, basking in its slot on the top of the food chain, was a rare and humbling experience.

Subarctic Secrets

For nine weeks this summer, I am lucky to have the amazing opportunity to return to work in Churchill, Manitoba, on the western shores of the Hudson Bay. Churchill is situated at the convergence of multiple biomes, with the boreal forest to the south, the low arctic tundra to the north, and Hudson Bay’s inland coastline to the north and east. This subarctic transition zone is characterized by vast, flat swathes of dry, lichen-encrusted tundra, sedge bogs pockmarked with round, shallow ponds, and seemingly endless boreal forest. At about 58 degrees North, the region represents some of the southern-most habitat of its kind, making it an ideal place for arctic research. Our team is here for the same project as last summer: studying breeding and migratory ecology of Hudsonian Godwits for Cornell Ph.D. student, Nathan Senner’s project.

Countless birds come here to rear young and every fiber in their body, every codon in their genome, is devoted entirely to fledging their young. Their nests are their best-kept secrets, and in order to obtain any information, we need to uncover them. This will be the last of five field seasons with the Churchill population, so our main priority is recapturing birds from previous seasons that have been carrying data loggers.

Female Godwit, well-hidden while incubating.

These are tiny light sensors attached to plastic flags on the birds’ legs, which, after being calibrated, deployed on a bird, and recaptured a year later, can tell us that bird's latitude and longitude at any given time, based on the times of sunrise and sunset recorded by the device. From this, we have been able to map the birds’ astounding (and previously unknown) migrations, which take them from the subarctic to Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of South America) and the Chilean coast in a matter of days. These birds often fly up to 6,000 miles in a single, non-stop flight, sometimes tripling their body weight before setting off for their distant destinations. The recapturing of birds on the breeding grounds to retrieve this data, however, is where things get dicey (see a post from last year for more detail: http://birdingetcetera.blogspot.com/2010/06/working-with-hudwits.html).

Retrieved data logger!

Male Hudsonain Godwit, carrying a data logger.

So far this season, we’ve seen devastatingly high depredation rates in our godwit nests, and are now down to 3 active nests, of 14 originally found, including re-nests of some pairs. One of the concerns is that the delayed snow melt this season, coupled with high water levels in the fen, resulted in godwits choosing the highest (and consequently most exposed) mounds on which to nest. All but a very few of the nests this year have been placed in grass clumps at the tops of high mounds, instead of under the short, tangled branches of a Dwarf Birch on the lower mounds (which was the case for nearly 100% of the nests last year). From above, these nests are much easier to spot, and the birds subsequently have to deal with a broader range of predators. In addition to foxes and sharp-eyed Northern Harriers, the godwits are jumping off their nests to mob Jaegers and Ravens, revealing their eggs to these predators as well. Last year, it was rare to see a godwit leave its nest for anything other than a low-flying, eyes-prying Harrier.

Aside from the near-constant nest-searching, we’ve continued to spend time finding Whimbrel nests and banding and flagging them, as part of the Arctic Shorebird Demography Network’s intensive, pan-nearctic shorebird survey. One of the most amazing things about spending sixty some days in the field in Churchill is having the opportunity to intimately observe the breeding biology of dozens of northern species, many of which are only transient visitors any further south. On Sundays (our day off), I’ve been getting up at 3:00AM to catch the subarctic sunrise at the fen, aiming to capture video of many of the breeders at their nests (details and footage to come soon). These early mornings are truly incomparable. The sun rises very gradually, taking several minutes to fully clear the horizon as it follows a long and low trajectory to finally set just before 11:00. Before leaving to film in the fen one Sunday morning, I watched as this tempered dawn bled across the sky towards the full moon, still sitting against a cobalt twilight in the west, and felt a bit estranged from the familiar confines of a passing day.

Arctic Tern

American Golden-plover

And now, as the days wear on without new nests, and the many wet socks corrode any surface on which they momentarily reside, Sunday couldn’t come sooner. But the longing certainly isn’t for a want of excitement, as we had our fair share yesterday afternoon. The first polar bear this season meandered down Twin Lakes Road, which neatly bisects the fen where we work most days, from north to south. As we approached the road at the end of a long morning, minds numbed from endless nest-searching and eyes drooping, mesmerized by boots sloshing through bog, Hannah looked up to see a bulky mass of white fur lumbering towards the car.

We were split into two pairs, and another team of three (working with Dunlin) was to our south when Hannah radioed to alert us of the bear’s presence. We all began to regroup and make our way south towards our car, but so did the bear, continuing along the road. Just as most of us were nearing the second vehicle, however, another truck started down the road, unaware of the bear, which had just laid down in the willows on the shoulder. The bear was then spooked onto the road, and began running towards our car, and so began the foot race. Soon, five of us were at the car, with the bear still hurrying towards us, while Hope and Hannah were still a few hundred meters out on the fen, paralleling the bear as they quickly moved south towards the vehicle. But the bear wasn’t slowing, and once it got fairly close, Hannah and I, from the south and east, respectively, both fired cracker shells to send the bear in a safe direction. Unnervingly, the bear paid no heed to the loud bangs that detonated nearby, and continued trotting in our direction, along the road. I chambered a lead slug and fired a warning shot to the upper left of the bear, which was far louder than the previous cracker shells, and thankfully sent the bear on its way to the west.

We all regrouped safely, with hearts pounding for the next several minutes. It was certainly one of the most exhilarating moments of my life, and in retrospect, a very good experience to have. After spending nearly three months here now, both this summer and last, we never had any sort of dicey encounter away from our vehicles, and while you know that a bear could show up at any time, in any place, its hard to stay truly vigilant all the time; yesterday certainly served as a very real wake-up call. The situation was one I’ve played over in my head countless times while working in Churchill, but I feel much more prepared in the field now, having actually seen such a situation pan out. And in retrospect, it was comforting to see that this bear, like most, was not in the least bit interested in us, but was simply spooked by a passing vehicle, making for an unpredictable situation. All is well, and we’ll be sure to keep things that way in the coming weeks.