Shaping up...

This year is shaping up to be an amazing year in many aspects. The year started off with one of the largest snowy owl influxes in Newfoundland history with a record high of 300 Snowy owls spotted in the Cape Race area by Bruce Mactavish. I never got the chance to see the large numbers in that area but I did get to see a few at Cape Spear and came away with a few good shots

Into the winter we went and boy was it a harsh one (actually as I write this on May 07 there is a fresh inch of snow on the ground so we're not done yet). Even though the weather was nasty it provided some amazing photo opportunities. A number of species which are normally very shy and hard to photograph became very accessible. With many of the bays packed with ice and all ponds frozen birds like the Common Merganser ended up moving into areas like Quidi Vidi lake. Overtime they became use to humans and provided some great photo ops.

Our Diving ducks were in full swing and in large numbers at times. This lone male Ring-necked Duck was the star of the show. I was able to get a number of shots of him which up until that point I had only one photo of a male.

Speed track to the end of the winter when I was notified by BBC Wildlife Magazine that one of my images (seen below) was going to be part of their March edition. This was huge news for me and it was certainly one of those proud moments.

It turned out that this was not going to be the only publication I would get as I received an email from the editor of the bird app iBird and they had accepted some of my images to be part of their new release of the app and also be used on their website Whatbird.com.

On top of all this exciting news for myself there is other big news happening on the island. Over the past 12 days or so we have been having a lot of Northern winds stretching from Iceland which has pushed a large number of Euro and Icelandic birds are way. Its an exciting time as many people are getting to see and photograph some never before seen species. I personally have only taken the chance to go see the Euro Plovers in Renews as my attention has been shifted else where.

Where you might ask? Well it turns out this year is shaping up to be an amazing Iceberg year. I've lived back on the island for 4 years now and I've yet to see or photograph an iceberg. The island is known for its Icebergs but most years are nothing like this one is turning out to be. There is one impressive Iceberg not far from my house which I finally got to photography and I hope there will be more opportunities to come...please check back soon as I will have more updates on the icebergs and hopefully some news on a nesting pair of Eagles and Osprey in Terrenceville, NL.