An endangered red-cockaded woodpecker flies in to his nesting cavity with a spider in in his beak for the awaiting chicks inside. Red-cockaded woodpeckers are an endemic species of the longleaf pine forest and were placed on the endangered species list due to the destrection of nesting habitat. Longleaf pine forests once covered an area the size of the Amazon across the southeastern United States. But today, less than 10% of this forest remains. @Jared Lloyd. Click image to license.  

I’m sitting in the most comfortable “blind” I have ever used. At the moment, the temperature is in the upper 60s, a light wind blows through the forest out of the northeast, and the glow of the sun is still filtering through the forest behind me.

Technically speaking, this isn’t a blind at all. It’s actually a rooftop tent I have set up on my old Land Rover. But a blind is what I am using it as, and so a blind is what it is for the day.

I pretty much make this stuff up as I go.

Me, I spend a fair amount of time camping for my wildlife photography. It’s the nature of the beast when you do this stuff for a living. More often than not, the animals I am photographing are nowhere near a Marriott.

For years I camped on the ground next a campfire, under the stars. Then it was a tent. Then a hammock. But during the pandemic, I purchased a rooftop tent manufactured by a Boulder, Colorado, based company called Roof Nest, and have converted the thing (only for the day) into a rooftop blind for photographing bird nests.

The species in question today is endangered. Red-cockaded woodpeckers are endemic to the longleaf pine forests of the southeastern United States and was one of the first species placed on the endangered species list – landing there some 3 years before the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Barely 7 inches tall, with a wingspan of only 15 inches, this little bird holds the key to the health and wealth of an entire forest in its beak.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are what we call ecological engineers. This is a term reserved for species with an oversized impact on the ecology around them. And as the phrase implies, the red-cockaded woodpecker, or RCW in bird nerd, quite literally shapes the world in which they live.

An ecological, or more appropriately termed: ecosystem engineer, is a species that changes the habitat and directly impacts the availability of resources for other species in an ecosystem. Beavers are probably the best-known examples of this by the general public. Beavers move in, dam streams, and thus create ponds and wetlands that completely alter the environment and the species in that environment. When you add a beaver dam to a stream, you suddenly create house and home for a grocery list of species that never could have survived there before.

This is what the red-cockaded woodpecker does in the longleaf pine forest.

Longleaf forests are a highly flammable place. Everything about the longleaf habitat, from the pine trees themselves to the wire grass that grows beneath, help to encourage fire. This is nothing like the lodgepole pine forests of the West. Instead, most of the plants in the longleaf pine forest evolved to promote fire as a means of removing competition for finite resources. Which means on average, fires come sweeping through the forest floor ever 2 – 5 years.

This type of fire ecology has a big impact on the availability of nesting and denning habitat for the species that make their living there. Blue birds, for instance, require nesting cavities in trees to survive. So too do screech owls, fox squirrels, southern flying squirrels, and a long list of other species. Normally, all these species would nest or den inside of old dead trees – one of the reason the worst thing you can do for your property is to remove dead trees. But in the longleaf, an ecosystem that is regularly baptized in fire, such dead trees are practically non-existent.

And this is where the little red-cockaded woodpecker comes into play.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are the only species of bird that can carve out a cavity inside of a living longleaf pine tree. Longleaf pines produce a tremendous amount of sap when damaged – part of their evolution for living with fire. Researchers in the longleaf pine forests routinely find other species encapsulated in tombs of sap after trying to excavate a cavity in one of these trees. But not the red-cockaded woodpecker, who evolved in this unique ecosystem and has not only learned how to manage all the sap when excavating a tree cavity but has also discovered how to create sap wells all around their cavity to both deter, and in the case of snakes, kill nest raiding predators.

So, what you end up with is a situation in which every single species of bird, mammal, amphibian, reptile, and insect in the ecosystem that needs a safe place to nest or den or take cover from fires, is 100% dependent upon the red-cockaded woodpecker for those cavities and thus their ability to even live in the longleaf pine forest.

All said and done, over 30 different species depend upon the red-cockaded woodpeckers’ presence in the forest for their own survival.

Remove the RCW, and all those species cease to exist there as well.

To be continued. . .

The longleaf pine savanna is a hauntingly beautiful landscape. @ Jared Lloyd 2021. Click Image for license. 

The post In the Forest with the Endangered Red-Cockaded Woodpecker first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post In the Forest with the Endangered Red-Cockaded Woodpecker appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

I want to tell you a story that will help improve your wildlife photography. . .

It was the Saturday before Easter, and to escape the crowds of people in a favorite park of mine, we decided to get off the beaten path and search for owls. Over the course of a couple weeks along the Gulf coast of Florida, we had found several families of barred owls in the old growth tropical hardwood hammocks. In typical fashion, the screeching calls of begging chicks tuned us in to the general area where boots on the ground, or in my case, Chaco sandals, and patience, and Swarovski binoculars did the rest of the work.

Although there was a migrating flock of endangered red knots along the beach I was hoping to spend more time with, I was desperate to escape the sea of humanity out recreating on this beautiful three day weekend.

Hiking in, we knew from scouting that there should be three owls in this 20 acre section of of live oak and sable palm forest. In these situations, you have but two methods of finding a family of barred owls: identifying the anomaly in the canopy by sight, or pick out the particular sounds of a begging owlet or reassuring adult.

Walking in blind, that is to say, without having a specific nesting site to go to, you you need to be prepared to put in the work – watching, studying, scrutinizing, and listening intently.

If you think this is always easy for folks like myself, you are wrong. When there is a specific subject I am looking for, such as owls, days might pass where the only thing I come away with is my Garmin watch congratulating me on reaching 10,000 steps.

But put in the work, do the scouting, piece together the puzzle, and you can spend weeks working with a single subject, getting to know them, building trust, and creating extraordinary photographs.

Most photographers across North America are familiar with the classic “who cooks for you” call of the barred owl. But of the 200+ different types of calls that a barred owl will make, the ones that are loud and distinguishable are meant for establishing territories or communicating at distance with mates.

With owlets about, everything is different.

In the presence of chicks, adults will make more of a cooing sound – similar to a mourning dove – as a means of communicating from tree to tree with owlets who have left the nest. Those chicks, on the other hand, make a screeching noise similar to the call of a gray squirrel when they are begging for food.

Mourning doves and gray squirrels. Neither of these are exactly right, but recognizing the similarities will put you on the mark.

On this particular afternoon, however, the “eyes” had it.

In a dense thicket of vegetation beneath the overstory of the forest, I spotted the telltale blob of an animal. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have found subjects to photograph by recognizing the anomaly like this inside the pattern of shapes of vegetation: black bears feeding on hawthorn berries while I’m driving down the road, porcupines napping in the middle of the day, American martens, and even a bobcat up in a Douglas-fir. But on this day, the “blob” proved to be the adult female owl. And within another minute of searching, we identified the owlet tucked deeper inside the brush.

It was hot and the light was still harsh. But with the heavy lift of finding owls accomplished, we settled down into the leaf litter of the forest floor to wait out the heat and sun and owls.

There seems to be a 10 minute rule with wildlife. Sit down. Shut up. Stop moving. Relax. And after about 10 minutes, the rest of the forest relaxes as well.

In short order, the owlet had enough of quietly watching us from her concealed position.

This part about relaxing is more important than you may realize. Even when communicating with each other, we say far more with our body language, our posture, our facial expressions, etc, than we ever do with our words.

The rest of the natural world understands they live in a mixed species community. Their audible words, or vocalizations, may be very different from species to species but they can communicate with each other via body language. And every time you encounter an animal in the wild, that individual communicates with you – whether you realize it or not.

Whether bison, bear, moose, or owl, that individual will attempt to engage in communication with you.

We as a culture are tragically oblivious to this simply because we have isolated ourselves from the rest of the world both physically and mentally.

Hopping out onto the branch of a live oak for a better look, the owlet began the telltale head bob as she was taking the measure of us.

But then she stopped and began looking down.

The owlet would look at us and head bob. Then she would look down and head bob.

Head bob, in owlet speak, is who are you?

It was only then that we realized just below the owls was a newborn fawn curled up in the leaf litter waiting for her mother to return.

 

What does it mean to truly be present in the moment? Wildlife photography isn’t just about finding an animal in front of your lens. It’s a multi sensory experience. You can’t be here if you are elsewhere.

If we hadn’t put in the work, listening and searching, we never would have found the owls – for which I created some very unique photographs that I’ll share in the coming weeks.

If we hadn’t simply set down and put in the time sitting quietly, showing the world that we were not a threat, the owls would never have relaxed.

If we had stood there in front of the owls, clanking away with tripods, shifting about, engaging in small talk, impatiently trying to entertain ourselves until the owls “performed,” we certainly would have never captured the images we did.

If we had not been paying attention to the owls body language we would never have realized we were not the only other animal she was inspecting.

This is how most wildlife photography works.

Sure, you can charge about a National Park searching for animals that are stoned on the carbon monoxide of vehicles and line up with 50 other photographers. But this is not how compelling images are created – especially of our more secretive and shy neighbors.

Understanding the BIOGRAPHY of an animal, understanding what they are communicating to you and what you are inadvertently communicating to them, is how we begin to take our photography to the next level.

It doesn’t matter how technically proficient you are with a camera. It doesn’t matter how awesome your new camera’s “eye detect” autofocus is. It doesn’t matter how well your camera handles noise, or how beautiful the bokeh is with that fancy lens. If you can’t find animals, and put them at ease, how are you going to be a wildlife photographer?

Cheers,

Jared

The post The Owl and the Fawn first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post The Owl and the Fawn appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Have you ever heard that saying, “chance favors the prepared mind?”

I think you would be hard pressed to come up with a better maxim for wildlife photography.

In so many ways, wildlife photography is heavily reliant on chance. I think about this all the time, especially when I am working in a national park like Yellowstone. The place is 2.2 million acres. A vast and sprawling ecosystem. And in the winter months, we are confined to very specific roads, that when viewed on a map, are as thin as a hair.

When an encounter with a wolf occurs, for instance, everything about my day, and everything about her day, all had to line up just right for our paths to cross at that exact moment.

That stop earlier to refill my coffee played a role in the photograph. Pausing to fruitlessly glass a distant hillside with my binoculars an hour before, ensured I was here at this moment. Those tourists that left their car parked in the middle of the road, all four doors wide open, no one inside, to selfishly make a selfie, brought me to this spot at this time right when a wolf stepped out of the trees.

When viewed from this perspective, the universe really must smile upon us every time when chance across an animal in this fashion.

But let me stop short of following a metaphysical thread of thinking here, because this isn’t the point that I am trying to make.

It would be incredibly difficult for me to make a living as a wildlife photographer if I relied upon chance encounters such as the one I describe above. Although so much of wildlife photography can, at times, feel like just good old fashion “dumb luck,” to be successful at this, to keep the debt collectors at bay, I need more than just chance, I need more than dumb luck, I need more than chaos theory.

This is why I like the phrase, “chance favors the PREPARED mind.”

And for me, being prepared means knowing the animals I am searching for.

It’s no secret that I like bears. As a wildlife photographer based in North America, I could spend every day of my life seeking encounters with bears and it would be a life well spent. But to do this, to have such encounters, to create the opportunities to be in the presence of wild bears, it’s important to understand them and their unique biographies. And when it comes to black bears in particular, it’s all about understanding their relationship with specific species of trees.

Northern Minnesota is one of my favorite places in the lower 48 states. It’s remote. It’s largely devoid of my own species. I can lose myself for days on end along dirt roads and trails in the boreal forest. And most importantly, it harbors 2,700 wolves (not a typo), 4,000 moose, 2,000 bobcats, and about 15,000 black bears.

But here is the thing about all those black bears: there is both rhyme and reason to where they live and go about their days. Black bears in this region have a direct association with one very particular type of tree that makes up only two percent of the forest in that area – the white pine.

White pines (Pinus strobus), which should not be confused with the whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) that grizzly bears have such a deep association with, is a magnificent tree to behold. Achieving heights of 200 feet, with a canopy that extends out as wide as city bus, these were once the redwoods of the Great Lakes region, or what the American chestnut was to the Appalachian Mountains. Although it’s not technically a boreal species, in northern Minnesota the white pine and boreal forest overlap with each other.

White pines once covered 3.5 million acres of Minnesota. But today, there’s a total of only 67,000 acres of these great trees left there. It’s the typical story. As soon as we commodify something in nature, rest assure we will do our best to try and drive it to extinction. Growing tall and straight, these native trees were in high demand the world over for use as masts on ships. After the complete collapse of the longleaf pine forest across the American southeast (considered the largest manmade ecological disaster to have taken place in the recorded history of the world), industry set its sights on the white pine of the Northeast and Great Lakes region.

As for black bears in the region, it’s not so much that the white pines provide food as they do hearth and home. Studies in northern Minnesota have shown that black bear mothers with cubs make use of old white pines for over 90% of their spring beds, and 88% of summer beds. Even once the cubs begin following their mom out on foraging trips, a sow will march her family several miles each day through the forest to return back to old white pines. And bears aren’t alone in this preference. A 30 yearlong study also showed that roughly 80% of all bald eagle and osprey pairs in the region prefer to build their nests in these trees as well.

White pines are completely unlike any other tree in that region. A tree that can grow 200 feet in height must be built to withstand the very worst that nature can throw at it. Strong and heavy limbs that can support an entire family of black bears resting safely from predators 50 feet above the forest. Deeply furloughed bark that makes climbing significantly easier for cubs than the smooth bark of firs, aspens, spruce, and birches. And large diameters that, when dead and hollow, can support a mother and 3 or 4 cubs as a den with enough insulation to protect against the deep negatives that Jack Frost, mass murderer of winter, sends to northern Minnesota that time of the year.

But here is the irony of all this: black bears actually avoid white pine communities. Meaning, where white pines are the primary species of tree (think: monoculture tree farm), bears steer clear. Instead, it’s the old growth forests, where diversity begets diversity, and white pines intermix with other species, creating the supercanopy in the forest, that we find the direct association between black bears and this species of tree.

A supercanopy, for the record, is created by only certain species of trees that can rise above and tower over the surrounding forest – which a white pine can do.

So, what does all this mean for us wildlife photographers? If you are in Great Lakes region and want to find and photograph black bears, find the big old growth white pines in the forest.

Regardless of what part of North America you find yourself in, if there are black bears in the region, rest assured those bears have a unique and direct association with one or two species of trees in your forest.

This is knowing your subject. This is the knowledge base we use as wildlife photographers to be able to predictably find and photograph animals. And this is how chance favors the prepared mind.

Cheers,

Jared

The post Chance Favors the Prepared Mind first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Chance Favors the Prepared Mind appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Questions & Actions

You talk a lot in emails and issues of the Journal of how important it is to understand the biology and ecology of animals if you want to be a successful wildlife photographer. What resources exist for learning this information? Take mule deer for instance. When is the peak of the rut, what do they eat, where do they give birth? The information I find on animals like this is very generic and seems to differ between each person writing about animals. Where do I find in depth details like you discuss? – Lee Varland, Wyoming.

Disclaimer: the above is paraphrased from Lee’s original question to make it more user friendly for this article.

This is a question I get a lot. Honestly, it’s one of the most poignant questions I get, and it may just happen to be the most important one a person can ask about wildlife photography once they have moved past the basics of things like exposure theory and autofocus systems.

Knowledge. Is. Power.

In a nutshell, this is why I created the Journal of Wildlife Photography to begin with. Nobody was discussing this stuff. And the results were thousands of excited photographers wandering about with heads full of technical stuff but with little to no knowledge of finding animals outside of driving around in circles within national parks.

So, let’s get to this shall we?

Lee specifically referenced mule deer, and so I’m going to use that species as my example here. But don’t let this species-specific response deter you from reading on. Just because you don’t have mule deer in your area doesn’t mean that the information here isn’t applicable to nearly every species on the planet.

For those of you not familiar with mule deer, this is a very large species of deer that live across the Rocky Mountains. They are the biproduct of the last ice age and hybridization between the Pacific black-tail deer and the whitetail. Big, burly, with massive ears that may be more useful for regulating body temp than hearing, and antlers that seem to rival that of the Rocky Mountain elk at times, “mulies” as many of us call them, are a favorite of many “western” wildlife photographers.

When it comes to big animals like mule deer, or what academia generally calls charismatic megafauna, there is no limit to the sheer quantity of information out there on their biology and ecology. Big sexy animals attract people in ways that insects and snakes just don’t. But when it comes to truly understanding the biography of such species we need to go beyond the “blogs” and web articles that over generalize for a 4th grade reading level.

My suggestion here is two-fold:

1. Mule Deer Country, by Valerius Geist. Geist is one of the world’s preeminent ungulate (hooved mammal) biologists and a prolific writer. Personally, I have every single book this man has written and find them absolutely invaluable. He writes for a general audience as opposed to wildlife managers and other researchers, which makes his stuff very accessible to someone who doesn’t have a background in bio-nerd. And especially regarding North American species, Geist has a book for nearly every species of ungulate on this continent: mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, etc.

2. Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates, Mathew Kaufman, Et al. As the name implies, this is an analysis of all the big animals who undergo big migrations in Wyoming (home of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as Lee Varland himself).

By choosing these two resources as a place to begin I am doing two things:

First, I am looking for an in-depth monograph by a wildlife biologist. A monograph is a detailed written study of a single specialized subject. In this case, that subject is mule deer. And as I mentioned above, Valerius Geist has been producing the most accessible monographs of animals like this for a more generalized audience for decades. This sort of thing isn’t limited to just mule deer, of course. Monographs are a foundation of wildlife biology. Most species have them in some form. The big animals, the charismatic megafauna, often have them in book form available on Amazon. And the same can be said for other species that evoke emotion and interest in the general population like great gray owls, for instance. If you are looking for a book like this for species other than mule deer, add the word “ecology” to the search term in order to help narrow things down. For instance, “great gray owl ecology.”

The second thing I did here was select a book that dove into a more “regional” perspective. Lee lives in Wyoming. The book Wild Migrations is all about mule deer and other animals in Wyoming. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate why THAT is very helpful.

One of the challenges that you will face if you start diving into wildlife monographs and the geek speak of researchers is that the vast majority of these people are not writers. Now add the fact that this stuff is extremely jargon heavy, pedantic, obsessive with citing of sources, and you might want to be prepared with a big glass of wine or bourbon to help ease the brain melt that may follow. In other words, don’t expect to find information written like my articles in the Journal. I have been writing for magazines since I was a sophomore in college. Taking complex information and distilling it down in such a way so that it is digestible is my superpower. Researchers are not often so gentle.

Another option is to reach out to us at the Journal of Wildlife Photography and let us know what sort of species you are interested in learning more about. Braiding together natural history and photography instruction is my wheelhouse here. For instance, I am currently working on an article about understanding, finding, and photographing great gray owls by learning how to “see” the world through their eyes.

From the Journal of Wildlife Photography. www.journalofwildlifephotography.com

The post Questions and Actions: Digging Deeper first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Questions and Actions: Digging Deeper appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Along the border of Montana and Wyoming lives a herd of wild horses unlike any other in North America. Their’s is a world that towers above the surrounding landscape high amongst the clouds. Known as the Pryor Mountains, the geology here makes up what’s known as an island in the sky.

The horses themselves trace their ancestry back to the Lewis and Clark expedition, when Seargent Pryor was tasked with transporting the Corps of Discovery’s horses back to Fort Manden after their successful return to what is now Great Falls, Montana.

East of today’s Yellowstone National Park, the party was raiding in the middle of the night by members of the Crow Nation. The majority of the horses were stollen, but many escaped amongst the chaos and took refuge in what the Crow knew as the Arrowhead Mountains – today the Pryors.

Join me on this off-road adventure as I travel high into the mountains in search of these horses to photograph.

The post Searching for Pegasus first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Searching for Pegasus appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Photographing birds in flight is more than just technical settings and knowing which auto focus area modes work best for the situation. There are techniques such as AF bumping and strategies for how and when to begin acquiring focus in order to increase success rates to name just a couple. But behind all of this, before we ever begin shooting, before we even pick up the camera, there are three considerations we must take into account: light, background, and wind direction.

If you want to be successful and capturing photographs of birds in flight, then you have to get all three of these things to line up first.

This may seem like a back to the basics sort of video. It’s not. These three things are the base in which your bird in flight photographs are built around. It doesn’t matter how sound your tracking skills are and how dialed in your auto focus settings are for this type of photography. If the light sucks, if the background isn’t interesting, and if you are set up in the wrong location for the given wind direction, then you are stacking all of the odds against yourself.

Check out the video above! If nothing else, you get to watch me accidently fall off my boat while filming =)

The post What’s More Important Than Your Subject? first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post What’s More Important Than Your Subject? appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Flash should be a basic part of every nature photographer’s kit. It doesn’t matter if you are a wildlife photography, landscape photographer, or a dedicated macro photography. Flash is one of the most important tools you need to learn how to use right now. As you will see in this video even using just one single flash will dramatically enhance your photography in the field. Photography is all about light. Therefore flash gives us the opportunity to actually take control of what is the most important component of photography. Most nature photographers are afraid of using flash however because they feel the results are so varied and it doesn’t make sense. The only reason flash is confusing for many people is simply because they don’t understand how flash is meant to be used.

The post Using Flash Changes Everything first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Using Flash Changes Everything appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Wildlife photography along the Gulf Coast of Florida is an excersise in superlatives. This is a landscape of deep beauty and mystery. Ancient live oaks drip with Spanish moss amidst sable and cabbage palms. There are places here that still hold the same look and feel and species that conquestadors saw when they first step foot on this sandy loam.

Then there are the birds. My god, the birds.

I spent two weeks in Florida at the begining of April. One of which was to lead my annual bird photography workshop there. The other was to explore and photograph and film. This video is the culmination of the latter. Florida sandhill cranes, Osceola turkey, barred owls, whitetail deeer, alligators, and so much more. Check out the video and join the adventure!

I live on the doorstep of Yellowstone National Park. I travel to far flung places range from Alaska to the Amazon. And still, the Gulf Coast of Florida is one of my absolute favorite places in the world to photograph in the spring.

https://www.jaredlloydphoto.com/tpj

The post Wild Florida Video | the Photographers Journal first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Wild Florida Video | the Photographers Journal appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Last November I spent a month in Wyoming’s Wind River range photographing wildlife. The prime directive of this trip was bighorn sheep. With an especially warm autumn, the sheep were late to the party. However, this is Wyoming we are talking about here – a place that I where I have spent a decade learning the nuances of the wildlife. And so despite the lack of sheep, we still had an awesome experience. Throw in some moose in rut and grizzly bears in the snow, and what more does one really need?

The post Searching for Bighorns in Wyoming first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Searching for Bighorns in Wyoming appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.

Noise is a fact of life in the world of wildlife photography. With our need to shoot fast and in low light, inevitably we find ourselves battling with noise as a result. There is much that can be done to minimize and even eliminate noise all together when you are behind the camera, but what about once you are behind the computer? All the suggestions in the world about how to properly expose to eliminate noise will not do you a bit of good AFTER the photo was taken. And so, in this video I show you what I consider to be the best method out there for removing noise from photographs. 

I don’t use plugins for this sort of stuff. I have tried many of those over the years and today I firmly believe that Lightroom’s noise reduction potential is amongst the very best as long as you use THIS SPECIFIC TECHNIQUE! 

Check out the video to learn how to remove noise in Lightroom like a pro!

The post Remove Noise in Lightroom like a Pro first appeared on Jared Lloyd Photography.

The post Remove Noise in Lightroom like a Pro appeared first on Jared Lloyd Photography.