NANPA Summit - Jacksonville, FL

Least Sandpiper

Conferences have the potential to change your life - if it goes well, you come home inspired and you've met great people -- maybe even someone who you're excited to keep in touch with for the rest of your life.  It can be totally thrilling.  I knew that when I heard that I'd been selected to attend the North American Nature Photography Association's (NANPA) Summit in Jacksonville, as part of their College Scholarship Program - but those few days vastly exceeded my expectations.

Twelve of us, graduate and undergraduate students from across North America, eventually converged on Big Talbot Island, after a series of flight delays and cancellations.  For the first part of the week, we would be staying in a house owned by the North Florida Land Trust, and spending all of Wednesday and Thursday shooting people and places on the island.

Tricolored Heron

Big Talbot Island is one of several state parks in the Jacksonville metro area, which together comprise the largest urban park system in the country - a whopping 28,000 acres. Big Talbot itself is unique in many respects. It stands as one of the last undeveloped barrier islands on the eastern seaboard, and consequently hosts an exceptional diversity of habitats. Its eastern beaches bear the brunt of the Atlantic's relentless weathering, a fact evident in the scattered skeletons of dead oaks and rapid dune erosion along the beaches' length.

Dead Tree Beach

As a barrier island, Big Talbot serves to protect the mainland from these same eroding forces, a function which may become increasingly valuable in the face of rising seas and more frequent hurricanes.  With diminished wind and salt damage, the leeward side of the island reminds one of the Florida that early settlers and Timucuan Indians would have recognized: a rich, subtropical ecosystem dominated by old growth oak forests draped in spanish moss.  The island also allows a vast saltmarsh system to exist on its western side, which in turn acts as a nursery for migratory shorebirds and waterfowl and local wading birds, as well as huge fisheries which carry  significant economic value to the Jacksonville area.  Big Talbot Island is just one of seven state parks within driving distance of Jacksonville's 1.3 million residents. That's a lot of people, and a lot of potential for popular support of these protected areas.

Live Oak forest along the northeast shore of Big Talbot

During our two days on the island, we explored this diverse array of habitats, interviewed a diverse array of people who enjoy them, and collected as many photographs and video clips as we could to tell a story about the Island's importance to the Jacksonville area.  During the following days at the NANPA Summit, we compiled our work and edited the story.  Between shooting, attending talks, and editing, this amounted to about four hours of sleep each night.  It was completely exhausting, and entirely worth it.

Filming interviews on Big Talbot Island - Photo © Mark A. Larson

Last minute edits - Photo © Mark A. Larson

Shooting at Big Talbot Island was an awesome experience, learning to coordinate the efforts of a dozen people to get the coverage we would need to tell a story. But the Summit itself was incredible, too, thanks so much to the team of mentors and coordinators of the College Scholarship Program.  We had amazing opportunities to meet with some of the world's leading wildlife and conservation photographers, and talking through project ideas with the people who have found ways to make these things work in fabulous ways was truly inspiring.

If you or anyone you know has an interest in a career in nature or conservation photography, do not miss the chance to apply for this scholarship!  The information you need is here.

Below is the short video that we produced for the North Florida Land Trust and Florida State Parks.

I'm now sitting in the Syracuse Airport, less than two weeks after the NANPA Summit, headed off to the Mojave Desert and surrounding areas in southern California, as part of a Cornell Lab of Ornithology expedition to film and record high desert breeding birds and their environment.  More on this soon, hopefully!

Trumpeter Swans

Each year, there's a group of Trumpeter Swans that winters along a stretch of the Huron River within Nichols Arboretum, in Ann Arbor.  Growing up, this was my always favorite local place to go birding. It has a wide variety of habitats -- hills with conifer stands, open meadows, a small grassland, and of course the river, skirted with hemlocks, willows, and a variety of small fruiting trees -- and enough space to make each visit different.  For the last several years, I've been able to watch and photograph this same group of abiding Trumpeter Swans, and during the winter months, when the skies are steely and the river is black and clear, dotted with rocks that are just high enough to support smooth, wind-sculpted domes of pure white snow, there's no more attractive sight than a trio of huge white swans flying slowly and powerfully up the river, honking softly.  

After last winter's criminal lack of snow, the half foot of virgin powder that greeted me on a cold December morning was a clear sign that the swans had to be visited.  And this time, I'd finally bring along a tripod, in hopes of gathering footage of these once-endangered birds for the collection at Cornell's Macaulay Library.  Not many regions offer such obliging views of this largest and most regal of the world's waterfowl, yet their elegant forms and mannerisms would make for beautiful footage even in a far less conducive situation.  So here's a short video compilation of the morning's work, where my exploration of the new snow was promptly interrupted, as I'd hoped, by the sound of Trumpeters coming in to land along the river.

Tracking a Marathon Migration: Churchill's Whimbrels

Flagged Whimbrel, "JM"

It’s been a crazy semester this fall, and the Churchill season that I never finished writing about feels incredibly far gone now.  It’s late at night in the middle of a busy week, but physics homework was easier than I thought, so what better time to recall a great summer?

After Alaska, I had a few days back in Ann Arbor to regroup and gear up for the 2012 field season.  I was particularly excited, as this was my first season with my own project, studying the migrations of Whimbrels and filming the process (not to mention the 25 beautiful little geolocators that had just shown up in the mail).  After gathering hip waders, knee boots, other boots, clothes for everything from 0-80˚F over the next two months, tripods, camera equipment, and the scattered notes I would need to finish up my last final term paper en route, I was off.

A light-level geolocator, weighing just 0.65 grams!

After a flight to Winnipeg and a night in a sketchy hotel, I was boarding the train on a rainy morning, headed for Churchill with nearly fifty hours of tracks ahead of me.  The train, ViaRail 693, comprised three passenger cars, a dining car, and a sleeper; all this for about four passengers and as many crew.  I found myself loving the solitude of the train – long hours to sit watching the scenery fly past, to think, to read, and to write the lingering term paper that grabbed at my ankles like a skeleton reaching out of a grave as a frightened protagonist frantically grasps for a tree root.  But I got a good grip on the root, soon freed myself from the zombie paper’s vice grip, and found time to jot down some notes on this new adventure:

May 30^th --

“It’s wonderfully quiet now, with the whole car practically to myself, and the tracks’ uncertain condition curbing our pace.  The car sways gently, like a big Cadillac on rolling back roads; the soft creaking between cars and the muffled rhythm of the tracks add weight to my eyelids, still reluctantly open as my eyes jerk right to left, following the passing scenery.  Surely I’ve scanned many treetops that have known the touch of a Hawk-owl’s feathered talons, and the blankets of spindly spruces, peppered with creeks, ponds, and boggy clearings certainly suggest that these predators are plenty.  Nevertheless, none revealed itself today as this enticing landscape flew past my panoramic window. It’s nearing midnight, and still a pale blue lingers between the chaotic fingers of silhouetted spruces filing past in the west, and in the east, a gibbous moon is peeking in and out of otherwise invisible clouds.” 

The landscape began to take on the familiar (and deeply missed) look of the far north, with dense walls of short, spindly spruces lining the tracks, shading a rich understory of lichens and Labrador tea.  A few shorebirds here and there, as clearings in the forest became more frequent – small groups of what were probably Pectoral Sandpipers, the occasional Lesser Yellowlegs, and as we passed a large open stretch of tundra, a Whimbrel stooped to a landing near the tracks after declaring the bounds of his new territory.  Churchill was close.

Hudson Bay, breaking free of ice in early July 

I won’t try to describe my fascination with Churchill’s subtle landscape yet again, but it is just as striking every year, and every day (and surely the train’s careful pace only heightened the anticipation).  After settling into the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, I had a chance to wander the study sites on foot, scoping out a few old Whimbrels in the immediate vicinity (I resighted JX about 50 meters from his 2010 nest cup). 

This year I was working with Johanna Perz, a masters student at Trent University.  We teamed up in the field to work on some common objectives, but each of us has our own project.  Johanna is focusing on demographics and habitat use: resighting flagged individuals to determine whether Whimbrels’ longevity can make up for the high predation and low nesting success typical here, and whether different habitats have different nest success.  My focus is on migration, so I was eager to find enough nests to deploy all 25 geolocators before season’s end.  These tiny data loggers, attached to the Whimbrel’s legs, record ambient light levels to determine the timing of sunrise and sunset each day of the following year.  From these data, we can calculate the daily latitude and longitude of the individual carrying the logger, and trace their exact routes to the wintering grounds (typically the northern coast of South America).  Identifying the specific stopover sites and wintering grounds these birds use will be a crucial first step towards protecting this species, already seeing significant population declines.

Whimbrel at a nest.

To my surprise, we deployed our last geolocator on June 26^th, and had found 52 nests by the middle of July (far exceeding my optimistic hopes of 30-40).  So for the last few weeks we kept busy with detailed habitat surveys at each of the nests, and trying to film any last footage I would need before heading south. 

After the field season in Churchill concluded, I spent August in Ithaca, working on an internship at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Multimedia Department to compile all the footage and produce the short film.  It was an awesome experience to plan, write, design, and edit the project, from start to finish – something I’d only casually experimented with on my own before.  I learned a ton from the Multimedia group, and am very grateful for their help and feedback – the final version can be viewed here: http://andyjohnsonphoto.com/p785051760/h483ce246#h483ce246

A Whimbrel takes flight; these wings will carry her more than 10,000 miles in the coming year.

And after all this time reviewing the season through video, and now a few stressful months removed from Churchill, I can’t wait to go back next year to retrieve the geolocators and see where “my” birds have gone.  North American Whimbrels’ wintering grounds are well mapped, but perhaps not as precisely as we’ve previously thought.  Some flocks linger along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, and many winter in the islands of the Caribbean, or in northern South America; the western breeding group (Alaska & Yukon) winters along much of the Pacific coast, from Oregon to southern Chile.  But recent satellite tracking studies of Whimbrels have shown some birds from the western arctic flying out over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, en route to Brazil, sometimes flying closer to Africa than the Americas!  With these surprising findings coming out now, it’s especially exciting to speculate about the Churchill birds, which have not yet been specifically tracked to their wintering grounds.  Beyond the universal intrigue of following any individual bird’s international migrations, there is plenty to learn about the specific ranges of these populations (and plenty to look forward to filming in the coming years!).  

A male Smith's Longspur, neighbor of the Whimbrels in Churchill.