A Look Back on 2024 Wildlife Encounters

As the year comes to an end I have taken the time to appreciate some of the more memorable wildlife encounters I enjoyed in 2024.  Fueled by morning coffee I have enjoyed looking through my catalogue of images realizing I have been incredibly lucky again this year. 

Meaningful nature encounters don’t happen with great frequency. It is more often the case that wildlife photographers comes home from an excursion without capturing an image. When nature co-operates, though, it more than makes up for those times when I am blanked.

It was on a mission to find snowy owls one day in February that I spotted my first ever short-eared owl.

These owls are much smaller than ‘snowies’ and can be predated upon by them. So when a local family told me they had seen a pair of  ‘shorties’ flying about their property I started paying closer attention.

After a few visits to these fields during which I learned this short-eared owl’s pattern I was lucky to see it land nearby. It perched on this overturned fence post for a couple of minutes before continuing its lap. Seeing this species was gratifying.

One of my favourite places to enjoy the behaviour of members of the heron family is Hespeler Mill Pond in Cambridge, Ontario. For several years I have wandered to a spot where, most days, these beautiful Great Egrets will come near enough to photograph in-flight. 

It can take a couple of hours – when it happens. On this occasion I watched the egret take off a few hundred metres away and fly directly towards me. Instead of veering off as it approached this one continued to within five metres before turning a millisecond after I snapped this image.  

It was an extraordinary moment. I wondered if it was merely curious. Perhaps he wanted a closer look at my camera setup! I maintain that some species LOVE Nikon.

Over my thirty years as a full time freelance journalist I have been fortunate to  travel the world.  Trips to Finland, Iceland and the Yukon got me close to the arctic circle (66 degrees north) but never inside the actual arctic. So joining a small group aboard a Swedish coast guard vessel in Norway’s archipelago of Svalbard in April/May saw me in the real arctic (at 78 degrees north) with the planet’s biggest land mammal the polar bear.

This female bear was on the lookout for seals when we spotted her. It was a moment when nature does co-operate as she wandered towards our ship and into camera range. An enormous animal adapted so well to life in the harshest of climates.

A pair of peregrine falcons has made downtown Galt, Ontario their habitat the past couple of years. I have watched them hunt pigeons and  gulls then bring them back to the church steeples to eat. For a short period this year I saw a juvenile peregrine flying about following the adults. One evening at sunset I managed to capture this image of the youngster.

I have been fortunate to have spent many hours with individual bald eagles. This past year was, for me, as good as it gets.

It seems every year the adult bald eagles along the Nith River produce three eaglets and one of them remains past the point where it should be able to fend for itself.  A couple of times in August I found her on the ground beside the river and I had to pretend not to see her. Then I would hurry past, giving her a wide berth, so as not to freak her out. I reckon she got used to me.

On this occasion she came down for a fish that one of the adults dropped in the river. I believe this was intentional. This action followed an hour or so of her complaining of hunger while the adult ignored her.

Over the years I have become fascinated by wolves. In late October, while in Killarney, Ontario, I was tipped off to the location of elk remains in nearby Burwash  – on my birthday as it happened – and I hung out in the area to see what might happen. Hunters leave ‘gut piles’ when they ‘field dress’ an animal they have killed. This attracts all sorts of wildlife. 

On this particular day there were several bald eagles in the trees nearby and flying overhead. But this huge Great Lakes wolf was scavenging the remains. It was a lucky day.

No doubt I will remember some other wildlife encounters in coming days. But these were all ones that immediately sprung to mind when I enjoyed my morning coffee. 

I do hope everyone is able to find time to get outdoors and have personal wildlife encounters. Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!