Costa Rica 2022

I’d wanted to go to Costa Rica for several years after speaking to other photographers. Some of the trips I’ve done focus heavily on a single species and I wanted a chance to go and photograph lots of stuff. On top of that I love hummingbirds and I wanted a chance to see if I could get decent photos of them.

The Trip

We flew into San Jose (Costa Rica) and had 2 nights in an airport hotel before heading off to 4 separate areas of Costa Rica. These were Rancho Naturalista (Turrialba), Paraiso Quetzal Lodge (Parc Nacional Los Quetzales), La Laguna del Lagarto Eco-Lodge (Alajuela), Bosque de Paz Reserva Biologica (Parc Nacional Juan Castro Blanco). We then returned directly to London.

Our group consisted of our 2 photography guides (Ellie Rothnie and Stan Takela) and 6 other guests (Andy, Chris, John, Audrey, Bill and Mary). It was really fun group and it helped it feel more like a holiday for us.

Airport Hotel

You might not expect the airport hotel to warrant many words but the photography started there. We saw all sorts of small birds in the vegetation around the hotel. I don’t think any of the photos made it in to my final cut but it can sometimes take a little while to really switch into the photography mindset and it was nice to do that and start getting up early before we even got to our first real lodge.

Rancho Naturalista

A lovely lodge with very pretty grounds that we didn’t leave during our stay. The main building had an upstairs area with hummingbird feeders that attracted a variety of birds. Various food was placed in the garden to pull in other types of birds and mammals. This was our first real experience of the crazy colours and sounds of the wildlife in costa rica. I’d never heard a bird sound like a firework until here. We did pop down to a house nearby for a brief period to try and get Snowcap hummingbirds but we gave up and accepted a ride back up the steep hill to the main lodge. Food was very tasty and it would be a lodge that I would happily return to.

Paraiso Quetzal Lodge

We had thought Costa Rica would be a hot and humid experience and even though some of the areas are higher up I didn’t expect such a drastic change. Our room was down a considerable winding slope from the main lodge and was a little wooden hut with a small electrical heater inside and about 5000 blankets for the bed. That unfortunately was not overkill and we needed all of them. The gardens were lovely and food was pretty tasty. You could photograph all sorts of birds just around the lodge but we were primarily there for the Quetzals. We originally had 2 mornings of Quetzal hunting booked but it became a single all-day trip after we struggled to find them until mid-morning (and our breakfast got packaged up and collected for us). We went back to the same spot after lunch and eventually got some shots of them out in the open. That was one of the most memorable bits of the trip as our patience paid off and the birds were absolutely stunning to behold. We did a little bit of hummingbird photography here with a flash setup but it wasn’t working too well and when I finally came to edit my photos I almost entirely preferred the natural shots to anything involving a flash.

La Laguna del Lagarto Eco-Lodge

I recall we took a very long and bumpy road to this lodge and our bodies felt it. It was all worth it though as this was like the brochure version of Costa Rica. We finally had toucans in front of us and they were glorious. The lodge had several perches near their main covered deck so I was able to do a lot of very comfortable photography of tropical birds. There were still hummingbirds here but far fewer. Whilst at this lodge we spent a morning photographing King Vulture which was fantastic and then we also had some bat photography after sunset and a macro session for frogs and snakes. Over half of my final images came from this region. I might not have liked the insect bites but the photography was fantastic.

Bosque de Paz Reserva Biologica

Our final stop was a lovely little place that turned out to also be high up and pretty cold. This time it came with some spectacular hummingbirds though, the Violet Sabrewing. These immediately became my main focus. Various other birds visited but mostly this stop was about trying to get hummingbird shots at the feeders and also in the very pretty garden. The food here was especially good and it was a very relaxing end to our trip.

Overall Thoughts

Costa Rica was an easy country to enjoy. The food was really good with an abundance of rice and beans which happen to be 2 of my favourite things. The wildlife was abundant and photogenic and everyone was very friendly. If I get the opportunity to go back and stay at some other lodges then I would definitely consider it along with stronger insect repellant.

2023 New Year Update

Last year really raced along after Botswana. We moved out of our old house in October and then after a little awkward time in holiday cottages we moved into our new house in November. Just 2 days later we left for Costa Rica and then things have settled down since getting back in December. We’re now actually feeling at home and into a bit of a routine.

I’m regularly heading out locally looking for wildlife and we’re also trying to get out on the nice weekends and explore the wider Norfolk/Suffolk nature reserves. We don’t have any international trips planned but we do have a lot of this area to explore and enjoy this year (whilst hopefully saving a bit of money!).

Hopefully I can start to work on my backlog of images and also start to build my understanding of UK stuff and maybe take some photos I like whilst out and about.

Botswana Safari 2022

For some years I’d had Botswana and the Okavango delta on my bucket list. Whilst I want to go to all the main safari destinations (South Africa (done), Namibia (done), Botswana (done), Kenya (next?), Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe), I felt like seeing the delta would be something different to what I’d seen in South Africa and Namibia.

The Trip

We flew into Maun via Johannesburg and then took a scenic flight up to Moremi game reserve, towards Xakanaxa. We travelled across northern Botswana to Khwai, then Savuti and finally to Kasane at the top of Chobe game reserve before flying home, again via Johannesburg.

We were staying in a mobile tented camp. Our group consisted of our photography guide (Mark Sisson) and his wife (Caroline) and then 2 other guests (Matt and Nigel). We had 2 guides/drivers (Leonard and Stanley). We would camp for 3 nights in each area before setting out for a long travel day whilst the camp would relocate. A number of camp staff set everything up, ran the camp and prepared food for us each day. We had one final night in a lodge on the end in Kasane to have access to a proper bathroom and bed before the flight home.

The Camp

Whilst we booked the trip through Nature’s Images, the local operator for the camp and guides was Kazuma Trails. Most operators offer 3 tiers for their camping in Botswana. Tier 1 means you help set up and run the camp and tents yourself. Tier 2 means that people set up and run the camp for you and conditions are relatively basic. Tier 3 is the same as 2 but with more luxury and bigger tents. We were on tier 2. It was sold as “semi-luxury” and whilst it was comfortable enough in some ways, it felt very basic in others.

Each tent was 9 ft x 9 ft with 2 beds (unless on single supplement) and with an area behind with a long-drop toilet and a bucket shower. The toilets just had a little metal stand over them with a plastic toilet seat on it. The bucket shower would be filled at specific times and we’d then ask for some more water so we could both shower. We had one little light inside the tent and one outside, running off a battery pack. We could only charge devices in the vehicles but we were prepared with power banks that made life pretty easy.

Food was all western. Some of it was shockingly good considering the basic nature of their facilities. In particular some of the breads, sauces and desserts (passionfruit cheesecake and banoffee pie). Some of the food was a bit less tasty - usually larger cuts of meat that were pretty tough.

Moremi

I had high expectations for Moremi as it’s right on the delta and you hear great things about it. Unfortunately our camp site should have been a short drive (45 minutes) from the air-strip but was instead a long drive (3.5h) due to a bridge being unavailable. It sounds like the bridge has been unavailable for ages. So getting to camp on the first night wasn’t as relaxing as planned. Also one of the two camp vehicles had broken down so the camp had tents but no bedding, showers, food etc. We sat around a little fire and had some crisps and eventually the rest of the camp got to us on a backup truck at around 11pm.

We drove around various areas near to the campsite and saw lots of birds and the more common animals but didn’t really get anything rare. We did a boat trip out onto the delta but that involved driving all the way beyond the air-strip and back again so it was an awful lot of journey for what ended up being 2 hours on the water in the middle of the day. We did see a few lions around a kill very briefly before returning.

I’d only really been to very dry places before on Safari so it was really a treat to be able to see so much lush vegetation and water, especially when flying over the delta too. It didn’t really live up to whatever crazy expectations I had built up but it was a nice (but slow) start to the safari.

Khwai

Things picked up in Khwai. We had a wonderful morning experience where around 70 Hyena (2 different clans) were clashing over a dead buffalo and we also had several leopard encounters. What we also had were more other people. The community campsites in Khwai had a lot more people in a much smaller area. This would be my first experience of proper scrums when it came to lots of vehicles around an animal in Africa. Vehicles block other vehicles and tempers flare. It definitely takes some of the joy of nature away when there are 10-20 vehicles all trying to do the same thing.

We did get to do a mokoro canoe trip in Khwai which was lovely as we sat silently watching an elephant come to drink in the delta right in front of us. This was the favourite of the boat trips in the end because you’re so low down and close to the nature and it’s so peaceful.

Savuti

Savuti was much more open in various areas than the tighter bush of Khwai. It felt like if we could get some mammals out in the open then it would make for some really nice photo opportunities. The area was also our best hope for wild dogs and cheetah but nothing is guaranteed. On our first evening we saw nothing of interest but on the next morning we found wild dogs relatively early. Whilst it looked like we might have missed the best of the action at first (our other vehicle found them around 10 minutes before we got there) we did end up with some nice opportunities.

We had a very slow day and a half after the wild dogs and it felt like Savuti might have given us our best already but then we got word that a couple of cheetah had been found quite far off, down some fairly unpleasant roads. We still jumped at the chance and managed to get to them in time for some nice photos before sunset. We had some extra excitement as I was stung by a bee during all of that and then we got our vehicle stuck trying to follow the cheetah. We ended up getting a further 3 vehicles stuck and all the guides had to be pulled out by a self-drive guy in a land rover. It was smiles all round though as it had been a big goal of mine to see and photograph cheetah on this trip.

On our final morning in Savuti we were again told of more cheetah but this time they were quite nearby and in the open area. We raced over to do some photos of them and then a pride of lions came along to chase the cheetah away and so we got photograph them too. Lions are one of the disappointments usually on safari because you find them next to a dead animal and they’re dirty, full of food and mostly sleeping. It was really nice to be able to enjoy seeing them up close during some nice light and whilst they were active.

Overall Savuti was the outstanding area of the trip. Much of that can come down to luck but it’s the area I would most like to return to if I were to go back to Botswana.

Kasane (Chobe River)

Our campsite in Kasane was pretty close to the Chobe river and views out over the Caprivi strip in Namibia. Life is abundant here and at most we saw over 100 elephants out in front of us all visiting the river to drink. We also saw hundreds of buffalo. These are the 2 main attractions. We did get some leopard and lion sightings but not fantastic photo opportunities.

You mostly end up driving along the edge of the river here or along the main road which is set back from the river. You don’t get the same variety of scenery as a result, but the river and views are gorgeous and help make up for that.

We finally got to photograph a honey badger here on our last morning and we raced past a lion to get to it. We’d been trying to see one since our very first evening when it was too dark to stop to photograph one and we were very happy to come full circle.

We did a couple of boat trips from the town in Kasane into the park and they were both very relaxing and pleasant. One was with the group and the other was through our lodge on our final night. The lodge was a welcome relief after the tents but ironically the bed was really hard and left us dreaming of our camp beds.

2022 Update

It has taken us nearly 6 months but we’ve finally exchanged contracts for the new house. We move out of our current one at the end of October and hopefully the new one is ready to go on the same day. It’s a very exciting time for us as we’re on the cusp of a new life that we’ve been looking forward to for some time.

The back to back trips to Scotland and Hungary went well. They were pretty exhausting and some of the small hides in Hungary did not agree with my body but it all worked out well. I won’t be in a rush to have that many days in hides without a proper break anytime soon though. I’m nearly done editing the Hungary photos so they should all be up soon. I’m not sure what order I’ll edit everything else I need to catch up on.

We’re not long back from Botswana but I’ll write a whole blog about that experience. Our final trip for this year is Costa Rica at the end of November. I think I’ll enjoy having a year off flying and group trips in 2023 but I can’t complain about how many good photo opportunities I’ve had this year so far. I didn’t feel much like a photographer after lockdowns and not much travel but that’s not the case now. Hopefully I can get some local projects going at the new house and then my photography won’t be so trip-based.

Colin the Cuckoo

I saw a video this weekend about a cuckoo (named Colin) near Guildford that has been coming to the same spot for about 6 years. This makes him about the oldest cuckoo ever studied in the country. He’s not too bothered by people and so each year a lot of photographers to to have a look at him when he stops off in the UK on his migration. We had one free day so we got up early and had a go.

Colin can be found in Thursley National Nature Reserve. I’d read reports that it’s a bit of a gamble as you can get everything between a really good showing and nothing depending on the day. We had alarms just after 4am and got there for 6.30am so that we could be set up for about 7am. Dawn was quite a lot earlier but generally Colin doesn’t show until later in the morning.

We photographed a few small birds whilst waiting and there were some lovely stonechats. Around 6 photographers were at the spot when we arrived but this swelled to over 30 over the course of the morning. People were generally very well behaved and formed a large semi-circle around the one main perch which had been erected. Anyone walking by might have thought we’d all found the holy grail.

Colin eventually dropped by briefly at about 10am and though it was fleeting, he posed nicely and we had a lovely little bit of light coming through. I was worried that the light would soon be getting too strong anyway so even though it was short I was absolutely delighted.

Though around 70% of the group remained, we gave up and headed home around 11am because there wasn’t a cloud for miles and the sun was just too strong. If it had been bright overcast then I’d have considered sticking around.

This was my first ever sighting of a cuckoo as they’re usually very secretive and you always hear them but never see them. We’re actually hoping to see more on a trip up to some hides in Scotland later this week.

What's going on in 2022

It seems like a good time to sit down and think about all the stuff going on this year. A little bit of it has already happened but there’s some big life stuff and trips coming up.

Moving House

We’re making the move over to Suffolk this year as long as everything goes to plan with the houses. We’re going to be living in a village that has a nature reserve and river within walking distance then we’ll have a whole lot of nature reserves within 20-30 minutes by car and some really amazing ones around an hour away. This is a really big change compared to where we live now and what we have access to. I’m hoping that it’ll mean a lot more photography and getting outside.

Trips

Due to a combination of bad luck (COVID pushing trips back) and stupidity (booking more trips), we’ve got a lot going on this year at a time when we should probably be saving for the house move! It’s exciting though. In May we’re both heading off up to Scotland for a long weekend and some varied hide photography. Immediately afterwards I should be jetting off to Hungary to go to Hortobágy National Park for yet more hide photography. Hopefully that’ll include some really exciting birds that we don’t get in the UK.

In August we’re travelling on a very long awaited safari in Botswana which has been towards the top of my bucket list for quite a while now. Finally at the end of the year we’re heading off to Costa Rica. I didn’t think we’d be able to go there for quite a while but some spots became available on a trip and we jumped on it. Not surprisingly.. we’ll be having a pretty cheap 2023!

Gear

I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a Nikon Z9 and a 400mm f2.8 TC lens (has a built-in 1.4x teleconverter). This will be my main travel setup going forwards along with various other supporting lenses for when things gets a little wider. I need to spend more time with both camera and lens but so far I’ve been thrilled at the quality and features. Next month will be the first opportunity to take it to photography hides and I’m really excited to see how it goes.

Etsy Shop

I opened the Etsy shop at the start of the year and without much promotion I made a couple of sales, one of which included my first review.. thankfully a glowing 5 star review at that. I’ve since tried a little advertising (to no avail) and then posted a voucher on facebook that seems to have grabbed a few further sales. Hopefully other buyers will be more tempted if they see that I have a number of sales and positive reviews. I’m still very unconvinced that I’ll actually be able to make any money out of print sales but I’m going to contine to see if I can get anywhere with the rest of this year. Even if I don’t many it’ll be nice to think that my photos are up on some walls and people are enjoying them.

Etsy Shop and a sale!

Just before Christmas I made myself a little Etsy shop with about 15 prints available. I picked from my best work and images I thought people might be tempted to buy for their homes. I know that print sales isn’t the best industry to be trying to get into but I thought it would be a fun thing to try having picked up a really good quality printer.

I knew that Etsy wouldn’t really show my items to people until I got a few sales under my belt so I figured that I’d do some kind of promotion to friends and family to maybe get a couple of reviews up on there. I was utterly shocked today to see that I had an order already before I’d even done that. I do have a promotion running just in case someone did end up looking at them. So I’ve just printed off that diving kingfisher and packaged it all up to post tomorrow. I really hope the buyer is happy and I know it’s a really good looking print on great paper.

I sold one to family a while ago as they wanted to gift it (it was actually this same kingfisher image) and whilst that was lovely, it didn’t feel like it really counted. I made my first proper sale to a new colleague at work just before Christmas which was fantastic. That spurred me on to try Etsy as it gave me a confidence boost. Selling to him was absolutely fantastic and he was thrilled with the bear print (I did myself one too because it’s gorgeous!) but I still wanted to make a sale to someone who had never met me and was just picking my work because they thought it looked really good and now I’ve done that. So the new goal is to sell another one on Etsy and hopefully get some feedback on my shop.

I don’t think I’ll ever make a living off prints (or even cover my camera equipment costs!) but it’s awesome to think that I made a little money and to know that my work is getting out there and being appreciated by other people. Things like instagram are fun but you only hold someone for a few seconds and it doesn’t compare to a photo getting framed and going up in a room somewhere where it’ll get seen day after day.

Churchill Polar Bears 2021 - Practical Photography Advice

My last couple of blogs were a look at the overall experience of travelling to Churchill on the trip but I also wanted to put some more detail specifically about photographing bears and what you should be aware of (or what I should remember if I’m going back and reading this in future!)

Photography:

Primarily I was photographing on this trip with a Nikon D5 with 180-400mm (and a built-in 1.4x teleconverter). This was an excellent range and could easily have served as my only setup. Others used 500mm lenses and frequently put a 1.4x converter on those too. You will want longer when you find a fox or owl and sometimes even with that length you still need to crop for composition with a bear. When the bears get close you are best off doing tight headshots rather than trying to pop on a wide-angle lens. The ground near the tundra buggy will generally be far from pristine and wide shots won’t look great.

On the tundra buggy all you really need is a bean bag. A tripod feels like it would be a major hinderance. You could theoretically do it but I doubt you’d be glad you did. There are around 10-12 rows and 2 seats per row either side of a wide aisle. We roughly got a row each. Each seat is next to a window that can quickly be slid down once you get used to doing it. The windows are ideal for people around 150-170cm tall I’d say. I’m 186cm (6’2”) and I had to stoop a lot. Depending on the angle there can also be a lot of twisting involved too. Most people seemed to get on fine but I found that my back was pretty unhappy after a couple of days of that. Whilst others could easily wait for the right moment for a photo, I had to manage my back pain in some positions.

The back deck is an option for photography too. The sides are roughly the same heigh that a window drops to but you have great visibility on 3 sides. It just happens to be much colder because it’s outside. Moving around on the back deck or anywhere in the vehicle would make it bounce to a certain extent so it’s something to be aware of. It’s really unavoidable though.

The photography wasn’t terribly complicated. The bears generally don’t move too fast and they’re not as white as you think so unless it is snowing you’ll probably focus just fine. There was also quite a bit of available light so ISO was generally 100-2000 except for at the end of the day. I varied shutter speed between around 1/500th to 1/2000th when the light was good. Higher for action and lower to keep the ISO down during the more static shots. Aperture was left wide open for almost the entire trip. Exposure compensation tended to vary between +1 and +2. It would be +1 if there were a reasonable amount of dark willows in the scene) and +2 if the scene was a bear on ice or snow. I’ve often ended up raising exposures by around half a stop during my editing even having used +2 in camera. A good starting place for colour termperature is +5700 on Nikon or +6000 on Canon and it’s worth setting this in camera for the trip just to make image review more useful whilst photographing.

Editing:

Compared to some other trips I’ve found my editing relatively simple from this trip. Composition is easily the most important factor along with getting the exposure right. You need to be brave and avoid grey snow by keeping it high. I did have to put some effort into cleaning up some of the scenes because we didn’t have deep snow. I generally did this in lightroom by raising shadows in specific places and using the dust removal tool as a rudimentary cloning tool. None of it was complicated enough to need to go to photoshop.

Clothing:

You need to be prepared for some pretty serious weather in Churchill. It can get to -40 and then have added windchill. We dealt with about -5 to -20 during our trip. The first couple of days on the tundra buggy I didn’t even have a jacket and gloves on but for the rest of the trip I generally did as it got colder. Photographing outside in the wind on one of the 4x4 days really made my hands very cold so serious gloves and heat packs came out then.

For the trip I used:

• Jacket: Rab Resolution Jacket

• Glove liners: Merino liners from theheatcompany.com

• Glove shells: Shell from theheatcompany.com

• Boots: Sorel Caribou Winter Boots

• For Ice: Yaktrax Ice Grips (they attach to your boots and really help walking on ice in town)

I also used normal stuff like fleeces, merino base layers, thick wool socks and winter-lined trousers. Everything listed above worked great. The glove combo really is fantastic for cold weather photography and the jacket is tremendously warm.

Accommodation:

We stayed at the Tundra Inn. Usually the trip completely books out a smaller lodge but due to COVID this wasn’t the case on our trip. This meant we shared the common areas with other travellers. Danny lost some Coffee and there was one night where some others stayed up pretty late talking and kept some of our group awake. We were right down the far end of the hall and didn’t notice. Rooms were clean and acceptable. They weren’t big and they weren’t fancy but they were absolutely fine for this kind of trip in a remote place.

Food:

Breakfasts were at the Tundra Inn pub just over the road from the accommodation. Breakfasts were a buffet and generally consisted of scrambled eggs, sausages, fried potatoes and bacon. There was toast, yoghurts, pancakes and some fruit and a few other things. Plenty to keep you going during the day.

Lunch was way better than I’d expected. It was a packed lunch prepared by the tundra inn and consisted of various sandwiches (enough to usually have 2 if you wanted), soup and cookies. The soups were great and the sandwiches were also really nice with lovely home-made bread. On more than one occasion I think I had half a sandwich stuffed in my mouth whilst photographing a bear because you never know when things might happen.

Dinner was a mostly disappointing affair. Due to the late final prep of the trip due to COVID we ended up booked into the Seaport Restaurant for 4 nights in a row rather than ending up in the Tundra Inn pub more. The menu was very repetitive and the food was pretty basic too. The Tundra Inn pub was much better when we were there though. We just wished it had been more often. This was a little more problematic for the guests who were veggie or vegan as they had even less choice for dinner. Thankfully the amount of food we were having each day wasn’t really leaving anyone hungry and I certainly gained more weight than I expected on the trip.

Overall the food exceeded my expectations in Churchill and I didn’t really need the little sack of flapjacks that I had in my luggage.

Churchill Polar Bears 2021 - Part 2

On our third day in Churchill we were in a new tundra buggy (they’re very similar but don’t tell the drivers that!) and with a new guide, Jim Baldwin. We had quite different conditions when we were heading out as there was quite a bit of sunshine. We didn’t have the best of luck with the bears though and our options were far more limited than in the previous days. The sparring males had moved on from where they’d been during the previous days and our incredibly good fortunes had dropped back to normality.

The highlight of the day was finding a snowy owl. We’d seen one very late whilst returning to town on a previous day but this time it was out in the open and in good light. The only problem was getting close enough to it. It’s quite comical slowly chasing an owl in a gigantic vehicle but that’s what we did. The image below is a significant crop but I’m actually very pleased with how well it came out. It’s not like I expect to be photographing snowy owls again anytime soon too.

By the end of day 3 I was in need of a change of scenery. The tundra buggy experience is great but 3 days in a row was definitely enough for me. Thankfully the next 2 days would be spent in rental vehicles on the local roads. There were only 4 in the whole town and we had 3 of them and they felt like they were held together in places with a bit of tape and a lot of hope. Churchill may not be connected to anywhere by road but it does have the roads out to the tundra buggy launch sites as well as to a research station and a few other places.

The primary goal on the 4x4 days was to see some of the smaller animals but on our first day we found polar bears. You need to have your wits about you when getting out of vehicles to photograph the bears because they can run incredibly quickly over that terrain. They can also move very quietly too and generally it wasn’t the bear in front of us that was the concern, it was that there were other bears in the area and we’d need to keep an eye all around us inbetween taking photographs. I kept things very simple on both days and just had my D850 with the very lightweight 500mm PF lens which meant I could easily move and photograph quickly and wouldn’t feel too encumbered. On my favourite opportunity of the day (below) I was able to get quite low down to give a really different perspective on a bear after a few days of shooting down towards them.

On the second 4x4 day Danny had a tip on where we might find red foxes and it was a good one. We found a red fox sat on top of a little ridge. We decided to walk nearer to it as a group for a short amount of time to try and get photos before scarpering back to the vehicles as you never want to be far from the truck in case a bear shows up. When we got too close the fox decided it had suffered enough of us but I was able to get a shot I was really happy with nonetheless.

We did have another polar bear encounter on the same day but none of the images ended up being as good as from the many other opportunities on the trip. At the very end of the day we briefly saw a silver fox but the light had gone and the fox was pretty elusive. Still a lovely thing to see though.

We had to get our suitcases packed up in the morning of the final day as we’d be going straight back to Churchill airport after the tundra buggy. So we rejigged our bags a little, got another big breakfast in and then we set out for the buggy. After two days in the 4x4s I was really happy to be back on a buggy. There’s just so much space and it feels a lot more relaxing, despite occasional bumps. Our big goal for the day was to find a mum with a cub because it was really the last thing on our list to find. Unfortunately when we did find some, they were hunkered down behind a bush and it wasn’t the photo opportunity we were after.

As we headed across the tundra we found a lone bear keeping cool on the ice by some water and it was a lovely opportunity. We shot it from a few different angles as we crept along but it ended up being one of my favourite little portions of the whole trip. You know it’s good when Danny is getting particularly excited. The bear was also doing his best job of modelling a few poses too just to work the cameras.

We stopped for lunch at the far end of where the tundra buggy can go and had the occasional photo opportunity but nothing outstanding. It felt like our trip was slowly winding up and we’d perhaps had the best of it and I was very glad for our good fortune. Then as we headed into afternoon it all kicked off as a mother with a pair of cubs were seen walking across the ice not too far from us. What ensued was the funniest car chase I’ve ever been in (probably the only one!). We were trying to get ahead of the bears to stop for photos but it felt like we were only going a tiny amount faster than them. We were all firing off photos as best we could from the moving vehicle but the vibrations you get from it really cause almost every photo to be blurry beyond worth. We stopped occasionally when the sceney meant we had better shots and then we lined up near them once they’d settled down in a little group to huddle together for extra warmth. It was the perfect way to top off the trip and we stayed with them until we needed to head off in time to get to our plane.

We flight took us back to Winnipeg for the night and then we travelled back to the UK via another long layover in Toronto with the group slowly disspiating due to different flights back. At least the layover time meant that we finally got to the bottom of exactly what Meatloaf wouldn’t do for love. I would absolutely recommend this trip to someone who wanted to photograph polar bears. Check out the trips at https://www.natures-images.co.uk/holidays/ to see if they’re running one. I’ll write a final blog on practical considerations for the trip about the photography and conditions that may be useful to anyone who finds it who is heading there too.

Churchill Polar Bears 2021 - Part 1

This trip was a long time coming. At some point a few years ago I realised that I was very keen to see and photograph polar bears before climate change made it even more difficult. The initial plan was to go to Svalbard and do a circumnavigation by water but it wasn’t happening at the ideal time for us. We eventually switched to go to Churchill in Manitoba, Canada and booked it in about January 2019 for November 2020. Then COVID happened and everything got pushed back a year. It looked unlikely that we’d get to go in 2021 too but the stars aligned, Canada opened borders and we made it. Now that I’m back and writing this there’s already a new variant and more restrictions are coming back in.

Churchill is on the edge of the Hudson Bay. Due to a number of factors it happens to be the area of the bay that freezes first. The polar bears gather to wait for the ice to form in October/November and then once it forms they head out to catch seals. They do a large circular lap up into the arctic and then back down each year. As a result of this behaviour, Churchill is one of the best places to see polar bears in the world. Churchill is a small town only accessible for tourism by rail and air.

So for our trip we made the drive over to London on a Saturday evening and stayed in an airport hotel. We then grabbed a bit of breakfast at Terminal 2 before flying to Toronto. We had a lot of paperwork due to COVID and felt extremely relieved once we made it through security. We then had an 8 hour layover where we got to spend a bit of time with most of the rest of our group for the trip before flying onto Winnipeg for the night. Our group consisted of 9 other guests along with Claire and I and also Danny Green, our photographer guide from Nature’s Images. Danny has been to photograph the bears many times and is exactly who you want to go with if you’re trying to get best results. We had a really late night into a very early breakfast at Winnipeg (involving no sleep whatsoever) before getting onto a plane up to Churchill and our trip starting in earnest. From the plane as we got close we could see there was some snow on the ground, a vital ingredient for getting photos of the bears in their iconic habitat.

After we landed we had a small tour around town to the bear jail (where polar bears that come too close to town get placed to rethiink their life choices for a little while), a plane wreck and to the local recycling centre. We weren’t really expecting to see a bear near the town and I was really looking towards the next day and hoping to see one on the tundra in all the glory of nature. Of course we saw one at the recycling centre and a mad scramble for cameras happened along with trying to shoot through the windows of our little minibus. It wasn’t how I imagined I’d see one but it was exciting and it did give us a few images with a different feel. Afterwards we grabbed lunch, got our passports stamped and had a chance to visit the local supermarket and then rest before getting some dinner.

A small number of companies operate tundra buggys which travel up and down the coastline looking for bears. Much like on a safari they can communicate and keep their colleagues updated on where the action is. The tundra buggys would be our home during daylight hours for the first 3 days and on the first we were guided by Neil Mumby. So we had a hearty breakfast with lots of eggs, bacon, sausage and potatoes and then hopped into the minibus for a drive over to where the tundra buggys are stationed. They’re very high up off the ground so they’re all docked to a wooden platform which you climb some stairs up onto and then board via the back platform of the buggy. Each buggy has around 10 rows and seating for 40 tourists. They’re very spacious and have a large back deck that you can stand on. We’d have lunch and snacks provided on the buggy and there’s even a flush toilet and heating. it does get cold though because the windows are frequently open for the photography.

Neil understood that at the top of our list was photographing the males sparring and there were male bears resting at the far end of the area that the drivers are allowed to traverse. We headed at full speed (which isn’t that fast, but can be very bumpy) to get to them. We saw a number of bears in that location and had the pleasure of photographing some during some periods of falling snow. We also got to see the males sparring and had several opportunities to photograph them doing so amongst the willows. Though Danny has brought many groups to Churchill, he had never been able to get the males sparring on the first day (and in many cases not during a trip) so we felt very fortunate.

The second day was much like the first but with even more bear opportunities. We had a pair of bears approach the back of the vehicle and we were able to get various close portraits of them. One even repeatedly reared up against the grate under our feet allowing us to get much closer than we expected to a polar bear!

Considering how well we thought the first day had gone, the second day left us feeling even better. It was out final day with Neil as we’d be getting a different buggy and driver for the remaining days. The rest of the trip would be another day on the buggy followed by two days in 4x4s and then back on the buggy before heading home.