Today (Wednesday, November 16th) is GIVE TO THE MAX DAY…A 24-hour blitz of giving to your favorite non-profit/organization. My organization is one of those participating. We are raising money to build a Birder/Photographer Welcome Center in the Sax-Zim Bog. To see our page, go to http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Foszb

I’m not sure if you all know that I started a non-profit called Friends of Sax-Zim Bog (www.Sax-Zim.org). Friends of mine, and fellow birders, Dave Benson and Kim Eckert round out the 3-person board of directors. We are dedicated to supporting, promoting and protecting the Sax-Zim Bog Important Bird Area of northern Minnesota. Our goals are 3-fold:
1. Acquire bog habitat in the Sax-Zim Bog of St. Louis County, Minnesota (We are losing valuable bog habitat to logging each year)

2. Build a small “Birder/Photographer Welcome Center” and bog interpretive boardwalk on the land

3. Fund educational/research projects centered on peatlands and associated birdlife

Why is this project necessary?
Sax-Zim Bog is one of THE MOST FAMOUS BIRD WATCHING SITES IN NORTH AMERICA, drawing hundreds of birders and photographers annually (thousands during big owl “invasion” years). [It was recently mentioned several times in the Hollywood movie with Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, called The Big Year]

BUT the area has no facility for birders, photographers, tourists and locals to get more information, share sightings, warm up, learn about the natural history of the birds and the bog.

Also, there is currently no easy way to access and experience the bogs. A series of boardwalks would facilitate this.
The Black Spruce-Tamarack bog habitat that is most important for the breeding and wintering birds in the core Sax-Zim Bog IBA area must be preserved. The “birdable” habitat that borders county roads is fast disappearing due to logging.

A photo-illustration of the proposed Sax-Zim Bog Birder/Photographer Welcome Center.

Many birders have found their “lifer” Great Gray Owl in the Sax-Zim Bog.

I got a wonderful surprise in the mail a while back. Unbeknownst to me, my friend from Wilderness Canoe Base, Beret (Borson) Nelson had created an art quilt based on one of my photos I had put in a blog post. It is an image I took at Crex Meadows in Wisconsin of 3 sunset-silhouetted Sandhill Cranes. The quilt piece is beautiful!

My father-in-law, with his amazing artistic eye, had it framed as a present.

Beret and her husband, Brett, met at Wilderness Canoe Base on the end of the Gunflint Trail in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. I worked there too and that is where we all connected. Brett and Beret live outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. Brett is a wildlife biologist. They have three kids. Neat family!

Beret says art quilting is a rapidly growing art form ….It is machine stitching called “free motion stitching” in which the feed mechanism is disengaged so you can sew in any direction. All those cattails and rushes are individually free stitched with the machine! Beret also uses an iron and fabric glue to layer hand cut shapes into the design. Beret recently won Grand Champion in the Art Quilt division at the fair this year…I can see why!

I hadn’t been out shooting with Ryan for a long time. You know how it is…life gets in the way. So on Friday we headed down to Crex Meadows near Grantsburg, Wisconsin for a little “target practice.” Sandhill Cranes stage here in late autumn to fuel up for their next stage of migration. The cranes feed in area corn fields during the day, but return to roost in the safety of Crex Meadows marshes just before sunset.

When Ryan pointed out the rising moon, I knew what photo I wanted. It’s easy to get cranes flying in front of the moon…The hard part is getting enough depth of field for both to be in focus and yet have enough shutter speed to stop the motion of the flying cranes. So I stopped down to f16 and set the shutter speed to 1/500 and set the ISO to “Auto.” You need a fair amount of light to do this so it must be when the moon is rising before the sun sets but before it gets too high in the sky. Also the cranes need to be not too close and not too far away. It all came together in this shot, though the ISO did have to range up to 1250.

The trip was mainly about just getting out with a buddy…We both have more crane photos than we can count…We’ve been to Crex many times and also spent a glorious five days in New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache, a major wintering area for Lesser Sandhill Cranes (and they are even more tame than these Greaters).

Long story, short, I have some very nice Sandhill Crane portrait shots (sharp, beautiful light, etc) So, with the pressure off, it was time to experiment. And this may be my favorite photo from the entire trip (all 6 hours of it!). I slowed the shutter to 1/15 of a second and panned with the flocks as they came in to roost. I cropped it and converted it to black and white. It is the “essence” of crane flight. I love the abstract flow and motion, and the way you can almost see and feel their wings flapping. We joked with Sridhar, a fellow wildlife photographer from Minneapolis, about our mistakes becoming “fine art” photography…but this one was intentional…I promise!

A line of Greater Sandhill Cranes coming in from the west, flying through a streak of color as the sun set.

Top: Canon 7D with Canon 400mm f5.6 lens; f/16 at 1/500 second at ISO 1250, tripod
Middle: Canon 7D with Canon 400mm f5.6 lens; f/32 at 1/15 second at ISO 100, tripod
Bottom: Canon 7D with Canon 400mm f5.6 lens and 1.4x teleconverter; f/8 at 1/200 second at ISO 500, tripod

My good friend Chris Evavold recently took his oldest daughter, Isabella, on a trip of a lifetime. And my Canon 400mm lens got to go too! In late October, they took off and drove far up into Manitoba and then caught the train to Churchill on Hudson Bay. They spent four days searching out the great Wapusk (Cree word for White Bear) and other arctic wildlife, even spending some time at the Northern Studies Center. Chris recently got a Canon 7D but did not yet have a long telephoto. I lent him mine. Here are some of Chris’s Polar Bear images from their trip.

The “Tundra Buggy” allows visitors close access to Polar Bears without harming the tundra itself…And it’s tall enough to keep bears from coming through the windows!

Chris is a high school science teacher in Esko, Minnesota. He also manufactures and designs racing dog sleds that have been used in the John Beargrease and Iditarod Dog Sled Races. You can see his sleds here: Black River Sleds

If Chris writes up a trip report, I will post it here.

All images by Chris Evavold