The Denali Highway

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One of the highlights of my Alaska trip was traveling the Denali Highway on our way from Denali National Park to Valdez, where we planned to go out on a glacier / wildlife cruise on Prince William Sound. From Denali National Park we drove about a half hour south on the Parks Highway to Cantwell, where the Denali Highway begins. The Denali Highway is a 135 mile road that extends from Cantwell in the west, all the way to the Richardson Highway at the town of Paxon in the East. It is a dirt road except for the last 20 miles near Paxon, which is paved. It is suggested that vehicles travel at a speed of 30mph, and on most of the road that's about as fast as you can go. It's such a beautiful drive that one would hardly want to travel any faster anyway.

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The scenery is spectacular, and you find yourself wanting to stop frequently to take pictures. We didn't really have a lot of time for that, so we agreed beforehand that we would only make about a half dozen stops. I found myself often shooting from the moving vehicle, taking multiple shots and hoping to get at least one good one of each scene I attempted to photograph.

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The terrain is varied along the route, as you drive through forests as well as wide open plains flanked by snow capped mountains. There are places were you are looking down into valleys with kettle ponds which often reflect the scenery behind them to make for an interesting photo. Near the end, there are higher mountains with glaciers sitting between some of the peaks.

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When we reached the of the highway at Paxon, we headed south on the Richardson Highway toward Valdez, and we made a stop at the Worthington Glacier, which is very close to the highway.

8066 - Worthington Glacier

The photos posted here are a sample of the views we saw during this amazing drive. I have posted a few more on my photo web page, and they can be seen by clicking here

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The next post will describe our glacier & wildlife cruise on Prince William Sound.

Map of Denali Highway

Hiking in Denali National Park Part 1 - Wildlife



68231 - Goshawk

 Note that I was without internet access during the trip to Valdez and I did not have time to write anyway. So now the plan is to work on getting the blog back up to date over the next few days.

Hiking the trails of Denali National Park proved to be a small adventure, and I had time to explore three different trails during my visit. Rock Creek is a 2.5 mile trail that meanders through forests of spruce and aspen trees and was colored with many varieties of wildflowers and grasses, as well as mostly yellow shades of tundra. Walking on tundra is like walking on 6-inch thick sponge, and it's amazing how it springs back to its original position after each footstep. The stuff would probably make a comfortable place to drop a sleeping bag to camp for the night.

The first part of the trail I only saw plants, grasses and flowers, and no wildlife at all. I will show some photos of the wildflowers later in a separate post. About 45 minutes into my hike I walked up on a goshawk that had killed a snowshoe hare and was having lunch. The biggest surprise was that he allowed me to approach him very closely and sit on the tundra and take photos for about 20 minutes.


68243 - Goshawk




68116 -  - Goshawk

 Another fun hike was a the Horseshoe Lake trail, which features a 250 foot elevation drop down to a lake surrounded by a spruce forest. This photo shows the view of the lake from above.



67130 - Horseshoe Lake

 There is a huge beaver lodge on the edge of the lake and we saw a couple beavers across the lake gathering tree branches to bring back to the lodge. We waited quietly in the woods at the edge of the lake and then photographed them as they went by carrying the tree branches. We had hoped to get photos of them chipping away at a tree such as the one in the 2nd photo below, but we never saw them out of the water.



7145 - Beaver




67137 - Horseshoe Lake


There is a hike at Savage River at mile post 15 near the ranger station that afforded us quite a few photo opps in just a short while. We saw an arctic ground squirrel, a full family of ptarmigans including a male and female and about 15 chicks, plus a coyote that tried his best to make a meal of the ptarmigan chicks or mew gull chicks that were in the same area.



68377 - Arctic Ground Squirrel



68673 - Male Ptarmigan



68861 - Mew Gull



68626 - Ptarmigan Chick



68867 - Male Ptarmigan hiding in flowers



 When a coyote approaches, you can usually tell where he is because the nesting birds in the area will dive bomb the coyote in attempt to keep him away from their nests and chicks. We witnessed this and it was fascinating to watch. The coyote was stalking the chicks directly in front of us across the creek while the ptarmigans were running to the left with their chicks to hide them from the coyote. Then the mew gulls were flying in from left to right and attacking the coyote to try and scare him off. They finally succeeded and the coyote retreated across the stream and up into the thick brush on the mountainside across the creek. We laughed as some startled hikers on the other side of the creek saw the coyote suddenly pop out of nowhere and pass right in front of them on his way up the mountainside. Below are photos of all the players in the scenario I described above:


68387 - Mew Gull Attacking Coyote



68800 - Female Ptarmigan with chicks
If you look closely, you can see 4 chicks in this photo. There were at least 3 or 4 more chicks under the mother's wings and out of view.



68800 - Female Ptarmigan with chicks



Birding Nirvana

Photographing Birds in Flight

On Tuesday I went out with the intention of getting some bird images and testing my camera that was just back from Canon sporting a brand new shutter. In my previous post, I used my backup camera and was pleasantly surprised at how well it tracked moving birds.

63622 Roseatte Spoonbill 1/3200, f5.6, +2/3EV
But this day I was happy to have my main rig back in my hands, and I also took the 40d just in case. I set out early to drive to my venue of choice, the rookery at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, which is about an hour away. This day would prove to be the best day ever for flight photos. The conditions were nearly perfect and the birds were so numerous that often I had to choose which one to follow and shoot. If there is such a thing as birder's nirvana, this must have been it. In this post I will show camera settings on each photo for the benefit of anyone who might be wondering. All photos in this post were shot with a Canon 1D-Mk2N body and 100-400L IS lens at iso 400. Aperture and shutter speed, as well as exposure compensation (if applicable) are shown above each photo. If exposure compensation is not shown, the photo was shot in full manual mode. Near the bottom of this post, I have shared some additional shooting tips for birds in flight.

I started off looking for an opportunity to photograph some perched birds, but I quickly abandoned that idea when I realized that there was such an abundance of flyers. To me, flyers are the ultimate challenge and I find it difficult NOT to try and photograph them, especially when the conditions are good and the backgrounds are sweet. Most of the morning, I was fortunate to have both.

63837 Great Egret 1/2500, f7.1
By the mid-afternoon, I had shot about 800 images, which is very unusual for me. Normally I will shoot till noon at the latest, and generally will end up with less than half that number. But the action was non-stop and I took advantage of it.

63594 Wood stork 1/2000, f5.6, +2/3EV
I watched as this wood stork repeatedly flew to a tree to rip off a branch, then carry it back to the nest. I loved the look of the wing spread just before he took flight. Below is another shot of him flying with a different branch.

63602 Wood Stork 1/1600, f5.6, +2/3EV
As is usually the case, there were more great egrets in the air than any other species. I did try to capture a cattle egret and snowy egret flyer, but the opportunities were rare. I was fortunate to capture a few shots of roseatte spoonbills in flight, mainly because I just happened to notice them coming before they got too close. There were only two or three chances to get spoonie flyers all day. My favorite shot was the first one posted at the beginning of this post above. The shot below is of a younger bird.

63560 Roseatte Spoonbill 1/1250, f5.6, +1EV
63664 Great Egret 1/2500, f6.3
The next few images are great egrets. I had a blast photographing these guys and even though I felt like I was taking a lot of shots that were almost identical, I never tired of doing it. I had a nice conversation with another bird photographer while I was shooting, and after a while learned that he is Kevin Karlson. Kevin has published several books on bird photography, and you can see his website HERE . Since we were both shooting right next to each other, we got many almost identical shots, and we had fun comparing them on our cameras.
63638 Great Egret 1/2000, f7.1, +2/3EV
63654 Great Egret 1/2500, f6.3
63552 Great Egret 1/2000, f5.6, +1EV
When I am shooting birds in flight, I find that it's generally best to shoot in full manual mode, but sometimes I also use aperture priority. No matter what exposure program you choose, you always have to overexpose the shot by about 2/3 to 1 stop if shooting against a bright sky background. Otherwise you will end up with a dark silhouette instead of a well exposed bird. If shooting white birds against dark foliage, the exact opposite is true and you must underexpose by approximately the same amount. The advantage of using full manual is that you can take a few test shots and set the exposure, and it will be the same no matter what the background. This eliminates the need to keep changing the exposure compensation depending what the background is. Since you never know exactly where the bird is going to fly, manual mode yields a lot more keepers and far fewer missed opportunities. I also prefer using flash rather than relying only on natural light. What I try to do is use just enough flash to fill the shadows, but not so much that the viewer can easily tell that flash was used.

63655 Great Egret 1/2500, f6.3
63693 Snowy Egret 1/2000, f7.1


63995 Snowy Egret 1/2500, f7.1
63833 Tricolor Heron 1/2500, f7.1
I was hoping to get a nice shot of a tricolor heron in flight, but unfortunately the only decent shot I think I got was this one looking almost straight up. Perhaps I'll get a better opportunity at a later time. I was not especially crazy about the wing position of the great egret shot below, but other than that I love the detail and sharpness. I am posting a 100% crop below the full shot, so you can get an idea of what I am seeing on my monitor.

63724 Great Egret 1/2500, f7.1
63724 Great Egret 100% crop
Snowy egrets and cattle egrets always seem to fly very erratically compared to the larger great egrets. This makes capturing a flight shot especially challenging. On this outing, I only saw 2 or 3 cattle egrets building nests, so the chances were limited. The shot below was my best effort.

64128 Cattle Egret 1/2500, f7.1
Shooting birds in flight is great fun, and it's also rewarding when you have a good day. I've had my share of frustrating days in the past, but this particular outing made up for a lot of them. This is the kind of day that keeps me coming back.