My wife and I were in Dorset, Ontario & Algonquin Provincial Park (APP) the last week and what a wonderful trip it was.  The main purpose of the trip was to attend the Region IV Interpreters Workshop for the National Association for Interpretation (NAI, www.interpnet.com).  While my wife was more involved with the conference, I had some much needed time in the field on my own.

I wasn’t able to get any new life birds but I was able to get 2 new life mammals (Pine Martin and Eastern Wolf) so I am pretty excited about that.  I did, however, get some nice shots of birds that I’ve had trouble getting in Michigan including Evening & Pine Grosbeaks, Common Redpolls, and Pine Siskins.

Most of my time was spent at 3 places within APP.  The park was an amazing place and we only saw a miniscual part of the park.  In terms of acres, it’s over 2 million strong.  The 3 places I did most of my shooting were the Visitor’s Center, the Spruce Bog, and Opeongo Rd.  Opeongo Rd. was known for extremely tame birds.  To illustrate just how tame these wild birds are, please see the pic below.  =)

One of the more memorable experiences of the trip was Tuesday afternoon and evening when all conference attendees were at the APP Visitors Center hoping for Wolves to come out and feed on a Moose carcass the staff had helicoptered in and placed in the bog about 400 meters aways.  Late in the afternoon, 2 Wolves trotted out as if they knew it was the perfect time.  I was able to get some shots including one sequence of the Wolves getting into a fight while feeding.  While this was obviously way too far out for any of the gear I had (and I had some long glass) one of the shots turned out good enough that it will be a nice memory to have of the experience.

Later that night after a spoken Wolf presentation, close to a hundred of us piled on the deck and the staff tried their own calls in order to get a howling response from the Wolves.  Wouldn’t you know it, it worked!  It was one of the most inspiring experiences I’d had in a long time which made for an end to a really amazing day.

Click HERE to hear the wild Eastern Wolves howling

I spent Wednesday afternoon birding with a good friend John.  Our goal was to basically find some hot spots for us to take my wife and his girlfriend to the next day.  We ended our search at the Spruce Bog where I was able to get some nice shots of Gray Jays landing as well as perched shots of Red-Breasted Nuthatches.  I worked all week on birds landing at perches (one of my goals for the trip)  It’s really a lot more difficult than one would think, especially knowing I’m after sharp & well-exposed stuff.  I think Lesson 2 on the blog will cover techniques on this very type of photography.

Monday - Wednesday brought great lighting and weather to the region which absolutely made my week.  There was enough available light in most situations that allowed me to really be picky with my depth-of-field without losing too much shutter speed.  In many instances I was shooting at ISO 400-600 with an aperture of f8-f11 and still getting shutter speeds well over 1400th of a second.  On Thursday, however, the lighting went to crap and even at ISO 800 wide open at f4, I was barely peaking at 500th of a second, not nearly enough shutter speed to get the results I was after.  Some times, one just needs to step back and come to the realization that some things just aren’t possible in those situations.

Keep near the blog for the next lesson in our series of tips & tricks (Lesson 2, Flaps Down and Ready to Land: Techniques for Capturing Landing Birds)

-Josh