This week’s photo story is all about winter wildlife. Here in Yellowknife things get pretty quiet in the winter in terms of wildlife as birds head south and bears hibernate. Animals that remain active and plentiful throughout winter months include red foxes, ptarmigan, and ravens. Once in a while I’ll get really lucky and spot a lynx, coyote, or wolf.
Back in 2014 I drove up the Tibbet to Contwoyto ice road in search of Barrenland caribou and was fortunate enough to stumble across a small herd milling about on a frozen lake. It was -30ºC with a nasty wind and it made shooting miserable.
Winter is a hard time for animals and can be a challenge to your fingers and your gear. Temperatures can drop well below -40ºC and below -60ºC with the wind chill, particularly once you get up above the treeline where there is no wind-break. Yet animals still thrive despite the mortally frigid temperatures.
Animals and birds that spend winters here are tough, having adapted to the cold weather and scarce food supply.
In recent years, the weather has been warming up (no, really) and I’ve started to see different animals such as magpies and woodpeckers staying in the city throughout the winter. Other species that used to be common as ravens are disappearing, most importantly the caribou.
Most weekends I try to get out during the few hours of daylight to see if I can find any animals most of the time I find something to shoot near the dump, an accessible and reliable food source for the city-dwellers such as foxes and ravens which is why I have so many photos of them.
Winter arrived in style this year with a record-breaking snowfall on the 15th of November. Overnight the city was blanketed with 24cm of fluffy white snow making it easier to spot animal tracks. I’ve been looking forward to this weekend and will be off in search of my first wildlife photos of the winter.
That’s all for this week.