The next morning I woke up and decided to try to track down my main target bird for the trip. Walking around the campground I faced two immediate problems. The first was that the habitat wasn’t right. The forests were dominated by coniferous trees and the understorey was pretty open – definitely not right. The second problem was that the mosquitoes were absolutely fierce. I am no stranger to these awful little insects but this was bad! But what can you do?
After a short drive around the area I found some habitat that looked much better for this species and sure enough it didn’t take long to track one down. The shoot was looking very promising and the bird was giving me good looks. It was extremely difficult to endure the conditions though. Even though I was pretty much completely covered up from head to toe the mosquitoes absolutely swarmed me. The only skin that wasn’t exposed was right around my eyes and the hellish insects zeroes right in on it. Every time I was focussed on photographing the bird they relentlessly attacked my eyes. I probably got 100 bites on my face and eventually couldn’t take any more. The mosquitoes won that one!
On June 11 I flew to Winnipeg and then on up to Churchill. I spent a few days scouting out the area for birds before my 6 eager workshop clients arrived on the 13th. Over the next week or so we were blessed with near perfect weather and some pretty cooperative birds.
I am taking 2013 off from leading this trip so that I can do a bit more of my own exploring and photography. But it will return in 2014. So be sure to send me an email if you would like to be on the “wish list”.
Be sure to
EMAIL ME
if you think you might be interested in my 2014 workshops to Churchill, Manitoba.
Glenn Bartley
Glenn Bartley is a professional nature photographer who specializes in photographing birds in their natural habitat. He currently resides in Victoria, British Columbia on Canada’s West Coast. Glen runs instructional photo workshops throughout the year to exciting destinations around the world. Upcoming trips include Vancouver Island, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Churchill Manitoba and Peru. He focuses on birds because there are so many species, they can be found almost anywhere, they are challenging to photograph and beautiful to watch.
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