Red Foxes tussle, nip and bark at each other. A Brown Bear might literally rip the face off a rival in a dispute over fishing and mating rights. Even cute little Black-capped Chickadees and Redpolls sometimes aggressively gape at each other and might engage in a quick peck to establish pecking order.
I suppose there are times when River Otters squabble, but in years of observing them at the lake, we never saw anything more than a look of envy cast from one otter toward another. (The coveting occurred over an exceptionally toothsome flounder one lucky fellow came up with.) Mostly, otters are the social goofballs of the four-legged world – rolling in snow, piling atop each other, sliding over ice and snow on sleek bellies, crowding together four-heads-at-a-time popping up from a hole in the ice, chasing each other in jaunty little parades as they scoot up and down the waterway. Maybe it was the Chignik’s abundant supply of fish that allowed for such conviviality. Whatever the reason, it was our observation that these inquisitive, cheerful beings simply like each other. And we think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us.
The Fox We Called SkitFoxes were attracted to the Spruce Grove where we had hung several bird feeders. The birds attracted them, no doubt, but they also ate seeds from the ground and probably caught a vole now and then. Skit was skittish and his right eye was bad. I was fortunate to get his left side in good light. Chignik Lake, 1/2/17
Tattler Creek TattlerWandering Tattlers are an uncommon shorebird that can perhaps most reliable be encountered along Alaska’s upland creeks and where they nest. The nests themselves are difficult to locate, though on one occasion we came upon tiny, recently-hatched peeps scurrying alonga stony river shoreline. One day while visiting Denali National Park, Barbra and I hike up Tattler Creek to look for tattlers. We lucked out and got this photograph. Later, we saw them on the Chignik, often in pairs in late summer after the nesting season was complete and they were leaving the area.
Red-breasted Merganser at Dawn with Char and Scaup: monochromeDecember 19, 2016Red-breasted Merganser at Dawn with Char and Scaup: color
All summer and well into fall, we could often see salmon and char from our dining table window as they migrated along the lakeshore beach. The char could be there in any season, following the salmon to gorge on eggs and then making their own spawning run. At other times the char would cruise the lake shoreline chasing down the fry, parr and smolts of Sockeye and Coho Salmon. At that time they would readily come to streamers, and even in winter you could sometimes get a couple of fresh fish for the evening meal.
More interesting than fishing for the char was watching the mergansers and otters go after them. The diving ducks often worked cooperatively, cruising along the shoreline with purpose reminiscent of soldiers on patrol. When they found a school of Dollies they’d herd them against the shoreline or sometimes against ice sheets. The otters behaved in a similar manner, and when there were a lot of char around the otters and the mergansers would set aside some of their natural caution and you could find yourself pretty close to the action if you sat still and waited.
Although it was late in the morning when I took the above photograph, the sun was just barely beginning to emerge over the mountains south-east of the lake. At first it was too dark to shoot, so I positioned myself behind a natural blind of tall, winter-brown grass and waited. There were about half-a-dozen merganser hens, or a hen and her first-year offspring, patrolling the shoreline, catching fish. Then this one came up with the catch of the day just as a flock of Greater Scaup were passing behind her.
A Portrait of KateIn truth, I do not know whether the regal fox we called Kate was male or female. One winter evening while I was photographing birds at the Spruce Grove she came by, and for a moment presented herself in the most beautiful chiaroscuro lighting, the last evening light breaking through spruce boughs.
Oregon Race Dark-eyed Junco, Sitka Spruce Grove, Chignik Lake. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the Oregon Race specimens of Junco hyemalis we observed and photographed our first year at The Lake represent the first ever records of this bird on the Alaska Peninsula. We saw both Slate-colored and Oregon Race specimens of Junco hyemalis every year at The Lake from 2016 through 2023. It’s time for various authors and institutions to update their range maps.November 29, 2016.
“I’ve been hoping to see you!” Sam came out to intercept me as I was walking along the dirt road past his house on my way to Sitka Spruce Grove. It was an overcast, cold November morning, the tinny smell of snow in the air. “I’ve been seeing a bird I’ve never seen out here. Batman birds. They have a dark head, like Batman’s hood. Nick’s been seeing them too. We’ve been calling them Batman birds.”
“Yeah. I’ve been seeing them too. Just in the last few days, right?”
“Yeah. I’ve never seen them before. What are they?”
“Oregon Juncos. They’re not supposed to be here. I’ve checked my books and range maps on the internet. This might be the first time they’ve ever been out here.”
Sam, in his early 70’s and not more than five-six looked up at me as he rolled the burning cigarette he was holding between his thumb and his first two fingers. For a moment nothing was said. He lifted his arm to take a drag and looked out over the landscape as he let the smoke out. Winter-brown salmonberry breaks and willows, scrub alders an even more drab shade of brown covered the country all the way to the treeline on nearby snow-capped mountains, country that in Sam’s youth had mostly been tundra.
“Things sure are changing here,” he said.
There are still people in denial, people who not so very long ago dismissed Climate Warming as some sort of hoax, who refused to believe any scientists except those who work for the fossil fuel industry. Most of those hardcore deniers have given up the tack of total denial. But they haven’t gone away, and they certainly haven’t conceded their error. Instead, the refrain now is initial agreement, “Yes, it appears the earth is getting warmer,” followed by a deflating return to denialism with, “but the world has always been changing.”
Not with this rapidity it hasn’t – the occasional meteor strike notwithstanding.
The result is that almost anywhere one lives, change can be observed in real time. This might be manifested in new species of flowers and other plants, new birds, other vertebrates, insects… or the rather sudden absence of formerly familiar species. Anyone with a camera has a chance to contribute to real-time, meaningful documentation of the change that is occurring right now all around us.
It’s not just the natural world that is undergoing rapid change. As expanding urbanization follows an overpopulated species across the globe, historic buildings are being torn down, forests leveled, rivers rerouted, lakes and aquifers emptied. Things that had remained much the same for decades, for generations even, are suddenly in a state of upheaval.
Photography is used for many things: to capture holiday moments; family portraits; events of all kinds; and increasingly, to make fine art. But some of the most compelling photographic images have always been and continue to be well-composed, straightforward documentation.
Anyone with a camera can make a meaningful contribution. Get out and shoot.
Spruce Grove HunterAugust 19, 2016, Chignik Lake, Alaska
Fairly new to photography when I got the above capture of a Merlin strafing songbirds at the spruce grove in Chignik Lake, I was somewhat frustrated with my inability to get the bird “tack sharp.” I was shooting with a 200-400 mm telephoto lens at the time, to which I often affixed either a 1.4 mm or 2.0 mm teleconverter, and simply didn’t have the skills to follow North America’s second smallest falcon as it zipped around the grove at breakneck speeds in pursuit of warblers migrating south in late summer. So I climbed a small rise that put me eye level with the upper branches of the trees, chose a section that was well enough lighted, focused on a group of cones, and waited and hoped for the little falcon to enter the scene. The bird obliged, I snapped the shutter, and at least came away with what I would imagine is the only photographic documentation of Falco columbarius in the Chignik Drainage. The species had been documented there… but I think not photographed.
However, before much time passed the photograph began to grow on me. In fact, I actually began to like it. The bird is clear enough to easily identify as a merlin, and I began to appreciate that the blur, while not depicting the bird itself as clearly as I had originally hoped, captures something else: the story of the falcon’s incredible speed and maneuverability as it circled the grove. Had I been able to make a sharp, clean capture of the bird, as I swung the lens to keep up with the falcon the trees would have become a blur. But the Sitka Spruce grove, a copse of 20 trees transplanted from Kodiak Island in the 1950’s when Chignik Lake was first permanently settled, is central to the story here. I love the way the lush green trees draped with new cones anchors this photograph, thereby helping to create a fuller story.
These days, the incredible capabilities of modern lenses paired with technologically advanced cameras have created a push… a demand, actually… for ever sharper images. This has become particularly so in the field of wildlife photography. But it seems to me that sometimes… perhaps often… this insistence on “tack sharp” (and perfectly colored) images of wildlife has come at the expense of the overarching story behind the image.
Over the next several years photographing bears and birds, fish and flowers, landscapes and life at Chignik Lake, as I gradually came to understand more about photography, I returned to the above photograph many times, mulling, contemplating, turning it over in my mind. We already know, in great, tack-sharp detail, what all of North America’s birds and mammals look like. There are thousands of beautiful photographs of just about every species… in some cases perhaps millions of such images. So, how does one employ a camera to go beyond documentation, to tell a larger story? For me, the beginning of the answer to that question started with Spruce Grove Hunter.
FrostOur first year at The Lake, we got to know seven different Red Foxes well enough to name them. Each had different facial features and individual personalities. Here is Frost, named for her whitish face and brightness of the white parts of her coat and tail. It’s often difficult to distinguish sexes in foxes, especially during the winter season when their coats are full, but we referred to Frost as “she.” Of the seven foxes, she was the smallest, perhaps in her first year, and the most likely to bark at other foxes, or for attention from us. I made this portrait a little after sunset on December 31, 2016.
Back in the DaySalmon Seiner from the wooden boat era in the Chigniks Chignik River, September 23, 2016
Concurrent with publishing this photo, I’m putting out a request on other social media asking my Chignik friends for more information on this vessel. I don’t know a lot about boats, but I’m fairly certain that this is a salmon seiner, perhaps built sometime in the 1940’s or 1950’s. It was aground, as you see here, about two miles up from the salt chuck when I noticed it tucked into the back of a wide river cove accessible only on high tides. The tide was out, the person whose skiff I was riding in was in a hurry to get down to Chignik Bay, so I settled for this passing shot. I always intended to go back and get additional photographs, but it never worked out. Years later, I saw what appeared to be the same vessel on a beach at Chignik Bay – perhaps towed there by someone who valued its history.
The lesson here, such as a lesson exists, is to be careful… mindful… about passing up shots – even if the composition is imperfect. No doubt every serious photography has in their memory banks a list of pictures that theypassed on and later came to regret not getting. You arrive at a new locale, note a species of bird that is new to you, assume that they must be abundant there, pass on the shot and never see another bird like it. You keep telling yourself you’ll make a portrait of that special friend – and never create the right moment. Or you tell yourself that you’ll come back to make a photo of the stunning landscape before you. But way leads to way and you never return.
While no one can get every shot they’re presented with, some of the ones we pass on haunt us. They become very much like those big fish that got away, growing larger over time… until all those photos and fish meld into a single image of a monster of a Japanese Sea Bass emerging from the surf, shaking her massive head, and then dark tunnel vision as the white jig breaks free from her jaws and comes springing back through the air as your knees turn to rubber – that Sea Bass my own personal metaphor for In my life as a photographer: a rare Spotted Redshanks flitting around me as I cast flies to Chignik River Salmon, assuming the bird to be more common than it is; a Parasitic Jaeger stuffed so full of fish it could barely fly perched near me on shore the first time I hiked out to Tikigaq Point, again, making the assumption that this would be a regular occurrence I’d have other opportunities to capture; portraits of my friends and neighbors at The Lake… the “some other day” I was going to photograph them never arriving.
So, imperfect as this photograph is, I’m glad I got it when I had the opportunity. A boat like this will never again be seen on the Chignik.
I’ll update this post if I discover additional information.
CutterLight 