Finding Wildlife pt. 2: The driving forces of life

Photos and Text by: Jared Lloyd

It can be daunting to think about the sheer diversity of life and consider trying to wrap your mind around each and every species of animal you may want to photograph. Here in North America, for instance, there are 965 different species of mammals and 914 different species of birds. And each one of these comes complete with their own life story.

How in the world does one even begin to try to understand what makes each of these animals tick?

Lucky for us, there are two basic themes that drive all life on Earth. Knowing this will dramatically improve your understanding of wildlife. Regardless of species or place, it will help us understand how to find subjects, and even how to photograph them. These are the two most powerful forces working on the physiology and psychology of all animals – including us. Understand how these affect your subject of interest and you will be able to cut through the vast majority of irrelevant information out there.

So, what exactly are these two most basic needs that dictate all life as we know it on this planet?

Food and sex.

That’s it. These are the grand orchestrators of life. We must sustain ourselves, and we must continue our species into the future. Other things are important as well, of course, but these are the forces that move mountains – biologically speaking.

Large Scale Perspective

Let’s take bird migration as an example.

Migration is a very costly undertaking. Odds are if you are an animal that migrates, you will die in the process at some point. This is just a fact of life. Migration is a monumental undertaking for many species. The arctic tern, for instance, migrates from the Arctic to the Antarctic each and every year. Back and forth, back and forth they go. Some 600,000 air miles will be logged by your average arctic tern before it dies. This is costly. This is risky. The difference between life and death, survival and ultimate failure, is often a game of numbers. And 600,000 miles is a lot of miles for something to go wrong on.

So why do this? Why undergo such a potentially deadly undertaking? It’s certainly not because of temperature - as species such as ptarmigans and penguins can attest to.

Let’s say a bird is adapted to eating a specific type of food and that food either leaves in the winter or annually dies off (think insects). Our bird has to make a decision. They can either start trying to find other types of food, or they can follow / go where their food is accessible.

So, if you are an insect eating species of warbler, you know that the first frosts of the year in the deciduous forests of the northern hemisphere will be the end of the summer buffet. But in the tropics, with its steady state climate and endless warmth, insect life will be abundant. But here, competition is already extremely high for food. And an extra 5 billion birds suddenly spilling into the forest can only be sustained for so long – which happens to be just long enough to sustain you until your preferred breeding grounds thaw out again. Breeding grounds, it should be noted, that were chosen based upon your offspring greatest chance of survival due to an explosive availability of food at that oh so right time of year.

Food and sex.

Have you ever heard of an irruption? This is not what volcanoes do, or what happens after eating bad sushi. An irruption is a predictable cycle in which certain species of birds like great gray owls, snowy owls, or pine siskins suddenly up and leave their northern haunts in mass and spill south by the tens of thousands – or even millions.

Let’s look at gray owls.

The population of mice and other small mammals tend to follow cycles of ups and downs. When food for the mice is abundant, their populations go up.

The flipside to this, however, is that as the mice population continues to grow, they begin to over tax their resources. Abundance in mice eventually leads to overpopulation and scarcity of food. When food becomes scarce, mice begin to starve and the population crashes.

The next year, those that survived the food shortages now find themselves with an overabundance of food and the cycle begins to repeat itself.

For a great grey owl that is dependent upon mice populations, their life cycle (like that of most specialized predators) follows that of their prey. As the number of mice in the northern woods increases, so does the population of great grey owls. An abundance of mice means more eggs laid and a greater survival rate of owlets. But when that population of mice suddenly crashes after several years of abundance, so too does the population of the great grey owls.

One big difference exists between mice and owls though, and that is the fact that owls can flay away in search of food. Mice, on the other hand, are stuck. When this occurs, when mice populations crash and great gray owls go on the move in desperate search of food elsewhere, you have what is called an irruption.

So, when you hear about massive numbers of great grey owls flooding places like New York and Minnesota, or snowy owls piling up in New Jersey – this is why. These birds are literally starving to death and 99% of them will never see home again.

Understanding how animals relate to their food allows you to to find and photograph them. For the great grey owl, typically the population of their food source crashes around every 6-8 years. This is not an exact science, of course, because there are so many variables at work.

What we do know for sure is that in the winter of 2004/2005 there was a major irruption, then again in 2012/2013. With this bit of knowledge then, we were able to then predict that another irruption should occur somewhere between 2018 and 2020. And, low and behold, 2017/2018 sawn another irruption across the northern states of the US. Keeping with this same pattern, we can then expect sometime between 2024 and 2026 will be the next big gray owl irruption.

When the next irruption does occur, be ready. Instead of a chance shot here and there, you can capture thousands of images of these birds hunting in the snow in just a few days spent in the field. All you have to do is find out where they irrupted to with the help of apps like eBird - which you will find an article all about in the next issue of the Journal.

THIS is how understanding a subject’s biography adds photographs to your hard drives.

Small Scale Perspective

I love moose. They are one of my favorite big mammals to photograph and one of many reasons why I originally moved to Jackson Hole in Wyoming - the easiest place in the lower 48 states to find and photograph moose.

Fact: geographic range and habitat is important.

This seems like common sense – and on a large scale it is. You are obviously not going to look for polar bears in the Everglades or snail kites in the Arctic, for instance. But on a smaller scale, however, this is a crucial concept that is often overlooked.

Take Jackson Hole again as an example. This is a pretty big place. The valley runs 60 miles long and is on average 15 miles wide. That’s roughly 900 square miles. Setting out with a goal to randomly cover 900 square miles in search of moose is fruitless for most people. Not that driving around Jackson Hole is necessarily a waste of time as the scenery alone is guaranteed to make you jump higher, run faster, have tighter buns, a better backhand, and cuter kids. But if your goal is to photograph moose – then it’s a little ridiculous.

Those of you who may be familiar with photographing in Jackson Hole are probably thinking, “Just drive the Moose-Wilson road or the Gros Ventre.” If this is you, you are correct. This is a solid strategy for finding moose.

But you probably know this because that’s what everyone knows who photographs moose in Jackson Hole. That’s the information passed around through the network of photographers. But why? Why exactly are moose along the Moose-Wilson road? Why are they along the Gros Ventre road? The answers to these two questions are completely different from each other but revolve around the same theme: food.

Understand this part of the equation and you can begin to pinpoint exactly where and when you are most likely to find moose all across this valley – not just where everyone else goes. And this is important to consider. Do you only want to photograph wildlife in crowds of other wildlife photographers?