Zen and the Art of Finding Wildlife part 4
Pulling my binoculars up to my eyes, I began to study the thing. It was definitely different. It was definitely brown instead of tan and assortment of pale greens. It was definitely a blob. And then it definitely moved – just a little. Silently, I motioned for Annalise.
Crouching down for a better look, we set and studied the anomaly for a couple minutes before at last the adult barred owl shifted positions.
With an owl identified, we began to assess the situation. It was still relatively bright and hot. It was too early for owl activity. We knew this going in, however. We didn’t want to be late for the party. The idea was to hike in, hopefully find the owls, and be in place long before they were ready to begin moving. Doing so would significantly increase the likelihood we would capture unique photographs of these owls.
If we waited for, or depended on, the owls to be up and moving about already, then we would have been walking in on an adult while he or she was hunting. We likely wouldn’t have seen the owl until the last second. We likely would have surprised the owl. And she would likely flee immediately. But finding the owls first while they were still at rest would allow us to try and predict where they would emerge from the roost and already be in place when it happened. We had no delusions of being “hidden” from the owls. Instead, we wanted to enter into their world, be noticed, and then build trust over time. This way, when the owls emerged, they were already acclimated to our presence and would accept us as benign.
I cannot stress how important this last part is. I do not wear camouflage except for under very specific and very rare circumstances. Earth tones? Yes. But I do not want to hide from wildlife. I want my subjects to see me and accept me.
Sure, there are those situations where the safety and security of an animal’s den or nest is at stake and the only way we can work with these situations is with the use of a blind. But even still, the animals know the blind is there. They see it. They know it’s different, that it’s not supposed to be there, that it’s new. But we set up blinds days in advance and then wait for the animals to be fully accepting of this new “thing” in their environment before we ever move into place. And even then, we enter the blind hours before those animals are likely to be stirring, then exit the blind long after they have either left.
With these owls, using a blind wasn’t possible. The owlet had branched. Mom and dad would be actively hunting, and the youngster will be exploring her newfound ability of flight in the area. A blind would have been useless. Therefore, the only way to approach this situation was to be allowed the honor of doing so. In other words, we needed to get into place, sit down, shut up, be still, and RELAX.
Every animal, including you, is communicating something at all times. Body language speaks louder than words. It’s universal. It evolved in a world in which everyone realizes they live in a mixed species neighborhood. Communication is the key to coexistence. The owls know this. The squirrels know this. The red-shouldered hawk, the bear, the bison, the lion, the leopard seal, the muskox all know this. But do you?
When you are in the field, you are communicating with every sentient being that can see and hear you – whether you realize this or not. When an animal flees, it’s because you communicated that you are likely a threat. When an animal hides, it’s because you communicated you cannot be trusted. And when an animal goes about their day before your lens, it’s because you told them your intentions are harmless.
Sit down. Shut up. Be still. And relax. Most of my best work was created because I simply did these four things.
As a rule of thumb, it usually takes the natural world between 10 and 20 minutes to adjust to your presence once you have settled in and quieted down. Clank your tripod about, and the clock will likely reset. Start talking to your companion, and the clock will likely reset. Get bored and start playing on your cell phone, and the clock will likely reset. But put in the time and the world will come alive all around you.
Sitting in the leaf litter of the forest floor, we settled back against our F-stop bags. Both of us carried 400mm f/2.8 lenses, and we had those resting next to us on the ground as well. For several minutes, the forest around us was quiet. Squirrels stayed at bay. Even the anoles seemed to be hiding. But given time, everything changed. Slowly, the world began to stir again as predicted. Then so too did the owls.
Another coo. A frustrated screech in response. Suddenly the owlet exploded out of the bushes and on to a live oak branch, followed by mom who launched up higher into the tree. And all of this just feet in front of us - exactly where we had anticipated that the owlet would come out and stage before hopping around the forest.
We were correct in our assumption that there was only a single owlet with this family. Normally, where there’s more than one, the screeches can at times become an overwhelming cacophony of begging cries drowning out everything else as if they are working each other up into a fever pitch. Not today, however. Solitary cries followed by long pauses had left us making meaning out of the unseen. One owlet was fine though. It only takes one in a great situation to make a beautiful photograph. I don’t need a herd of owls to make this afternoon a success.
In typical owlet fashion, she began to bob her head back and forth and forward and backward, staring in our direction. In owlet speak this is, “I see you, who are you?” With eyes that seem outsized for their smaller bodies at this age, the bob and weave of an owlet is both hilarious and cute to watch at the same time. But then she stopped. She repositioned. She began looking down at a section of the forest floor both beneath her and out of sight to us. And here she began the head bob again. “I see you, who are you?”
Annalise and I simultaneously turned toward each other in a knowing glance. We were not the only ones here. Maybe it was just a squirrel. Maybe it was an eastern diamondback rattlesnake everyone kept warning me about. Or maybe it was a small alligator held up in what was left of the mud and water the live oak branch straddled above.
Silently repositioning ourselves to try and see what our owlet was investigating, we noticed a small reddish colored ball of fur with little white spots curled up in the leaf litter below. Two large black eyes stared at us, framed by two gigantic ears turned in our direction. A whitetail deer had bedded her newborn fawn right below the owl tree as she was off browsing in the open meadow between the hammock and a nearby river. From a 50-acre hammock of trees, we now had both owls and a baby fawn to photograph.
This is the power of observation in wildlife photography. Instead of just becoming excited about finding a family of owls and the prospect of photographing them, we continued to watch and observe and take in all the available information we had to work with in the situation. Understanding the owlet’s behavior revealed an entirely new and unexpected opportunity for us, much like how the alert calls of various woodland birds can reveal the presence of an owl if you are paying attention.
Being able to step into nature and read the signs around you is more than academic education. Although I have a background in biology, I believe this plays a very small role in my ability to find, approach, and photograph wildlife. Sure, I might be able to throw around a few extra fancy words, but what good was understanding the calculus that drives models for predicting competition in specific predators for prey resources in this situation? Instead, this functional knowledge base comes from time spent afield experiencing the natural world on its own terms.
Barry Lopez, in his poetically beautiful book, Arctic Dreams, talks about the conflict of world views between natives and biologists in the arctic. I say conflict here, but really this just means the trouble many academics have with embracing or accepting the possibility that not everything can be found in books, and not everything can be explained by their specialty of interest. Experiential education reveals to us an infinitely more complete means of knowing.
The complexity of nature, more often than not, defies the specialization demanded within the halls of academia. Instead, as the late Edward O. Wilson argued throughout his career as a Harvard biologist, to truly understand a thing, we must embrace a consilience, or synthesis, of knowledge from so many disparate ways of thinking and seeing the world.
Finding and photographing these owls is a perfect example of this. For Annalise and I to be successful this day, it took understanding what we ourselves were communicating with our body language – kinesics. It took an understanding of animal behavior – ethology. It was an understanding of all things barred owls, their varied calls, and what it all meant – ornithology. It was understanding how this very particular environment would impact the life and times of this barred owl family – ecology. It was the ability to recognize and see the visual patterns in the landscape and pick out the anomalies. It was our ability to move silently through the woods, to employ basic stalking techniques. In other words, it was a consilience of knowledge. Although some of this knowledge was acquired in books and research, the vast majority was learned from simply time spent in the woods.
If you were to ask me to suggest one thing you could do differently, right now, that would increase your chances of finding and photographing elusive wildlife on their terms, even without a detailed knowledge of the animals you are searching for, my suggestion would be to become more self-aware when in the field.
Understanding how we are being perceived by the rest of the natural world is as much a part of wildlife photography as understanding autofocus systems.