Season One
0001 Episode One Finding Raptors
In the early months of the year this location can be as cold as any part of the state. However, it can also be a hot spot to find raptors to photograph. This episode takes up to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge in early January to find and photograph raptors.
Tips on staying warm and how to find the raptors and much more.
Map to finding bald eagles.
When you decide you are going out to photograph wildlife, there are a few things that you need to consider.
Your camera. Does it have enough frames per second to capture wildlife in motion?
How does it handle high ISO in the low light times of the day? Early morning and late afternoon, when wildlife is most active.
How large is your camera’s burst? Meaning how many frames can you fire off before your camera says “Wait a minute, I have to load all these files to the card!”
Having a large burst can make the difference between getting the shot or missing the shot.
You have to consider your lens. If you are going after birds, do you have a long enough lens? Typically, a 400mm to 800mm is a standard issue when it comes to photographing birds.
Is your lens fast enough? Does your lens have enough light-gathering attributes to make quality captures in lower light? Most wildlife photographers are using 400mm f/2.8 or 600mm f/4.0
How sturdy is your tripod? Do you have a gimbal head to make life easier to move the camera and lens combo effortlessly while attached to the tripod?
When photographing wildlife there are many, many factors that need consideration. That’s why good results are so rewarding.
Most photographers are thinking of all the technical concepts that are needed for wildlife but there is one, overriding factor that you need, that you HAVE TO HAVE, to be successful.
The one, I would say without a doubt, THE most important puzzle piece you need to figure out when shooting wildlife is….wait for it…. The wildlife itself. Yes. If you go out to shoot wild animals in their natural surroundings, you have to have the wildlife. You have to find the wildlife. THAT is the foremost need in wildlife photography.
Okay, that’s it for this week’s podcast.. be sure too….
No, I’m not going to tell you WHAT you need and then not tell you how to get it?
I found this past week THE place to go for shooting raptors. Eagles, hawks, owls are all at this one place. Now if you are not near California, I apologize but it will still be worth the trip for you.
The place is the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge. This is located near the border where Oregon and California meet. The nearest city is the small town of Dorris. When we went we stayed in Klamath Falls, Oregon, about 30 minutes north of the refuge.
The way to get to the glorious place is Interstate 5. Five goes all the way from Mexico up to the Canada border. Along the way, splitting California in two, vertically. Once near the top of the state, you are going to take highway 97 North. When you start seeing signs for Klamath Falls, look for State Route 161. Once on 161 be ready to photograph. To give you an idea, this trip takes about 6 hours from the San Francisco Bay area.
The time of year is important, I’m told, but in our case, we went the second week of January. Apparently, From December to February the Bald Eagles come down to take advantage of the food sources that are plentiful at this location during this window of time. I’m sure this would be a wonderful place to visit all year, but if are looking for eagles, go in January.
Highway 161 is fantastic for several reasons. First, it’s not very busy. Yes, a few trucks go whizzing by and some local and tourist traffic, but really, it’s very light, at least in early January. This is important because you will be pulling over often to photograph many species of raptors.
The first thing you might notice is that there are very few tall trees on State route 161. Just a few telephone poles over the first mile or so then nothing tall at all. It’s this aspect that makes driving it with a camera so much fun. Red Tail hawks and rough-legged hawks perch upon the tallest thing that they can to keep an eye out for their next meal. This happens to be only road signs, that are seldom over 6 feet tall. This means that if you are stealthy, you can drive right up to one of these hawks and photograph them right out your window. You can park and wait for the action to come to you or drive around and find it.
There are a few tall trees along this highway and occasionally you will find Bald Eagles perched in them. You can tell it’s a Bald Eagle from far away due to their size first, and then of course, its white head. While we did find and photograph some eagles along the side of the road on 161 there is even a better place to find Eagles right there in the reserve, which I’ll tell you about later in the show.
The Lower Klamath Wildlife refuge is broken up into two parts. The Lower Klamath area and the Tule Lake Refuge.
When we first heard about this area for photography, we heard about blinds that were in place for wildlife viewing and photography. The rules were pretty simple, you could reserve a blind and you would have to get into place, inside the blind, before sunrise. Then when you left the blind during the day, you couldn’t return. This is designed to keep the comings and goings in and out of the blinds to a minimum. As it turned out, there were no more reservations to be made and some of the blinds have been removed. The blinds that are there, we only found on Tule Lake.
Tule Lake is a wide flat area where parts of the lake are home to many, you guessed it, tulles. You can take a driving trip on a tight gravel road, around the lake and you will likely see Blue Herons, some Harriers working the canals, and some waterfowl. We believe that the waterfowl population increases here later in the year, but again I can only speak for early January. We spotted a couple of Bald Eagles over in this area but truthfully, the background was not a nice as over at the Lower Klamath Refuge.
You can get some good shots of waterfowl flying low over the tulle’s and that is about as good as it gets for backgrounds. The Tule Lake area is also quite a bit more windswept than the Lower Klamath refuge. So, it’s not as comfortable on a cool winter afternoon.
The winter light is also a big bonus this time of year. While most wildlife shooting is done early morning, usually from dawn until about an hour after sunrise, and late in the afternoon about an hour before sunset until the sun is actually gone. But in winter, it’s a different story. The sun travels pretty low in the sky and even on a cloudless day the light can be excellent from sunrise at 7:30 up to about 10:30 am or so and then it gets good again about 2:30 pm and is stays good until the sun sets at 4:50. So the windows for photographing wildlife in winter are much longer.
During the high sun parts of the days, we would travel around and look for nests and signs of raptors in the area. In one spot we stopped, I came across a black, slick-looking charcoal briquette thing, sitting on a wood railing. The railing was for one of the water overlooks that was built for wildlife viewing. This slightly slender briquette was unusual so I asked one of my other photographers who came on this journey, what it was.
On this trip, I was joined by my brother Ron who is an avid outdoorsman, hunter, and new into video production. He was interested in trying his hand at capturing video of some birds of prey. My other friend, David Bozsik, is also a wildlife photographer, but likes to refer to himself as a “wildlife enthusiast”. As much as he knows about wildlife photography, he is even more knowledgeable in the behaviors of the wildlife itself. So, I asked him about the black briquette that I found and he whipped out his pocketknife cut it open and showed me what was inside.
When you are out looking for wildlife to photograph, knowing as much as you can about your subject will improve your chances of getting good images. In this case, we knew there were owls that came to this area, from seeing the owl pellets, next, was the challenge of trying to find them, during the day, when we knew they would be hard to find.
Owls are nocturnal hunters. Where the hawks and eagles bed down for the night, the Owl is beginning its day, finding food. Too bad for the mice and other small rodents because the owl is very a very stealthy hunter.
What we knew so far was that there were indeed owls in the area. We know that they are very likely catching up on their sleep from working the night shift. We also know that common to the area were the great horned owls. This, we found out when we visited the nature center to learn more about the area we wanted to photograph. This was done our first evening into town to make sure we were ready for the next few days shooting.
One afternoon we paid special attention to the tan, dense trees that covered some of the marsh areas. Since we knew that the great horned owl was this same coloring as the trees, we figured that would be the place an owl would roost for the day, so that he wouldn’t be easily seen.
Our camera setup was mostly like this. I had a Nikon D5 with a 300mm 2.8 lens for photographing birds that were close to the car as we drove by and everything else I shot with a Nikon D850 with a 600mm f/4. Usually, when we spotted something, we would park the truck and quietly pull the tripod out of the back and set the 600 on a Wimberley Gimbal head. Since balancing those heads is super simple, we did that quickly and then used the head leveler built into my Really Right Stuff carbon fiber tripod to get the head level. That way the camera and lens will stay right where you want without having to hold on to it. But when the animal moves you have all the independence to move with it. Within 30 seconds we were set up, with the freedom of movement the Gimbal head gives us we were ready.
For these situations, I like to shoot in Manual mode. The color balance is set, in most cases to cloudy, and I take a few test shots near the tree or of the animal itself. In the case of the bald eagle, you want to make sure your exposure will not let the white bald head be over-exposed. If I was using aperture preferred along with the camera’s meter, I may inadvertently fool the camera meter. This is because the camera’s meter is trying to give us an exposure that is medium gray. When the camera is trained on a dark set of branches, the meter may think that it needs to make the exposure lighter, turn it from dark to the tones of medium gray. It will lighten up all that darkness of the trees and dark feathers of the body of a bald eagle. When shooting manual, we are just setting the best exposure for the animal itself under this same lighting condition.
So, using Manual mode for this kind of shooting is the way to go. The eagle would sit in the tree and you usually have plenty of time to take test manual shots. When you land on an exposure that looks good but with still some texture in the white bald head, you are ready to go. Next, you need to confirm your shutter speed and ISO. I like to shoot my wildlife wide open at f/4 and for flying birds, I want to get all the flapping feathers sharp. So set my shutter speed on 1/3200thof a second or up to 1/5000thof a second. I then adjust my ISO to fit. As always, I want the lowest ISO I can have to keep the image’s quality high.
After a few shots of an eagle in the tree, the waiting and anticipation game begins.
I like to hope for the best. I hope that the bird flies into the best light. And the best direction for the best background. Most birds like to take flight into the wind, so position yourself where you can get shots of just that. What I do is practice a few turns of the camera as if I am following the bird. I do this to make sure that I don’t have another tree in my way or a person who might be standing next to me, I practice getting that flying shot.
I have set up the exposure, I have tested it. I have practiced the most likely flight pattern and I am ready to go. We just need the bird to take flight, interact with another bird or target his next meal.
For just getting the bird to take flight, watch his legs. If he is standing on one leg resting,He is very relaxed and it is very unlikely he will take off from that position. Birds almost always take off with their two feet down. Another thing to watch for is a sudden poop. Yep, a lot of birds will “lighten the load” before taking off. Once you see that happen, get ready.
Just as you start to see them take off, starting with a slight crouch, begin shooting. Keep your continuous focus on the bird’s eye and rely on your camera’s autofocus. Shoot until the bird is gone, or flying at an angle that is undesirable. I have plenty of hawk asses to last a lifetime so I stop shooting if that is the direction the bird is flying.
When shooting at the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge in early January be prepared for the cold.
My brother Ron, who went with us on this trip is an avid hunter and fisherman and is well-practiced in the art of staying warm and comfortable in cold conditions. I asked him how to best prepare for the cold and possibly wet weather in this part of California this time of year.
Once you make your way up to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge, I encourage you to make your first stop the Visitors center and Refuge Headquarters. At the center, they have a ton of information about the area but even more valuable is a map of how to get around in Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge and Tule Lake. To get to the visitors center you need to keep traveling east on 161 and take right at Hill Road. Down another mile or so the visitors center is on the right.
Once you have seen all you can at the center, make sure you are dressed in your warm clothing and get over to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge for the best shooting.
When you turned on to 161 from 97 there is a slightly hidden driveway about six miles east from the junction of highway 97. On the map you picked up at the visitors center there is a red dotted line that makes its way from 161 into the refuge itself. This is the road you want to be on. Once on that road, pull over and check your gear. You are only minutes from seeing bald eagles close up, so get ready.
All along the west side of this dirt road are cottonwood and willow trees. This is where you will find bald eagles. If you don’t see any just drive slowly around the refuge and look for tall trees.
At one point I was recording sound during the late morning and this happened:
All in all the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge is a great place to go in the middle of winter. Dress warm and keep looking and you will find lots of wildlife to shoot.
Equipment list:
Nikon D5, Nikon D850, Nikon 600mm f/4, Nikon 300 f/2.8, Wimberley Gimbal head, Really Right Stuff tripod, Gitzo 1588 MK monopod, Wimberley MonoGimbalHead.