Photo Safaris By Region AFRICA - Botswana Wildlife - Madagascar - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya ANTARCTICA - Ultimate Antarctica ASIA - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - India—Rajasthan & Puskar Fair - Japan's Winter Wildlife - Laos & Vietnam - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival EUROPE - Best of the Greek Isles - Eclectic Holland - Finland's Arctic Wildlife - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Tuscany - White Horses of France's Camargue NORTH AMERICA - Alaska Overland - Aurora Borealis—Fairbanks, Alaska - Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River, Alaska - Bosque del Apache & White Sands, New Mexico - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Summer - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Colorado Fall Colors - Denali National Park in Autumn - Exploring Lake Powell - Florida Birds—Best of the West - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Great Smoky Mountains - Horses & Icons of the Wild West - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage - Mexico's Colonial Heartland - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - Olympic National Park, Washington - Predatory Animals of North America - Springtime in Callaway Gardens, Georgia - Ultimate Wolves - Ultimate Yellowstone - Washington's Palouse Country - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons in Autumn - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw PACIFICA - Midway Atoll SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA - Galápagos - Patagonia's Mountain Landscapes - Ultimate Dolphins Wildlife Models Shoot - Wildlife of Brazil's Pantanal Photo Safaris By Date JANUARY - Ultimate Wolves - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw, Dallas, TX & Raleigh, NC - Ultimate Yellowstone FEBRUARY - Japan's Winter Wildlife MARCH - Florida Birds—Best of the West - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw, Phoenix, AZ & Boston, MA - Midway Atoll - Aurora Borealis—Fairbanks, Alaska - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - White Horses of France's Camargue APRIL - Springtime in Callaway Gardens, Georgia - Galápagos - Finland's Arctic Wildlife - Patagonia's Mountain Landscapes - Eclectic Holland - Great Smoky Mountains - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Mexico's Colonial Heartland MAY - Wildlife of Brazil's Pantanal - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Ultimate Dolphins Wildlife Models Shoot - Best of the Greek Isles - Tuscany JUNE - Washington's Palouse Country - Predatory Animals of North America JULY - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Summer - Olympic National Park, Washington AUGUST - Washington's Palouse Country - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage SEPTEMBER - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya - Denali National Park in Autumn - Alaska Overland - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Madagascar - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons in Autumn - Botswana Wildlife - Colorado Fall Colors - Predatory Animals of North America - Horses & Icons of the Wild West - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival OCTOBER - Exploring Lake Powell - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - India—Rajasthan & Puskar Fair NOVEMBER - Laos & Vietnam - Ultimate Antarctica - Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River, Alaska DECEMBER - Bosque del Apache & White Sands, New Mexico

		By Wayne Lynch & Aubrey Lang Ultimate Antarctica February 2–March 1, 2006 Spring Fever in Galapagos April 29–May 15, 2006 Polar Bears & Wildlife of Spitsbergen June 26–July 8, 2006 Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 8–22, 2006 Emperor Penguins of Snow Hill Island, Antarctica October 19–November 3, 2006 and October 31–November 15, 2006 On Wayne's birthday in April 1997, we made this entry in our field journal. "We are inside the blind by 5:30 A.M. The grouse has become very tame, and even as we tramped around outside the blind, the defiant bird stayed on his drumming log just 30 feet away. Moments after we arrived, sunrise fingered through the aspen trees and golden rays dappled off the chest of the drummer. The bird is drumming every five to eight minutes, and with each session the dried leaves at the base of the log flutter lightly in the wind generated by the blur of his wings. It is a glorious morning to be immersed in nature. The forest around us is full with the rich songs of spring, and each song tells a tale — the rattle of an irate kingfisher as it chases an intruder from its lakeshore territory, the bugling music of a skein of migrant sandhill cranes as they wing overhead, the bold tattoo of a pileated woodpecker as it hammers on the crown of a dead tamarack in the nearby bog, the chatter of love-hungry wood frogs, and the whistling wings of a pair of common goldeneyes as the male doggedly shadows every dodge and swerve of his fast-flying mate. We never tire of spending time in a blind. It's always memorable, always rewarding. It is the best place to celebrate a birthday! The ruffed grouse is the most common and widespread grouse in North America. This handsome woodland bird — its feathers, a cryptic mix of browns, smoky grays, tans and chestnut — is found throughout the northern forests of Canada, Alaska, New England and the Midwest, and in the foothill forests of the Appalachians, the Rockies, the Cascades and the Olympic Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. In short, wherever there are sizeable stands of aspen and balsam poplars, you are likely to find this woodland drummer. Our sympathy goes out to all you folks who live in Florida and southern California, but you can't expect to have great winter weather and ruffed grouse as well. Each spring, between March and May, every self-respecting male ruffed grouse stakes out a drumming log, and then rapidly beats his wings over and over again to advertise his machismo to rival males and prospective female partners. In a typical drumming session, the energetic male beats his wings about 50 times, in a blur that lasts about 10 to 12 seconds. (This is the kind of trivia that naturalists thrive on.) During the peak of the mating season, in late April, a testosterone-charged "ruffy" may drum like this every 5 to 10 minutes for several hours at the beginning and end of each day, and sometimes during the night as well. Every male grouse uses one main drumming site, usually an old decayed log or exposed tree root, and one or two secondary sites. All of the drumming sites are commonly within 50 yards of each other. Male grouse are true homebodies. Actually, once they acquire a territory during the first or second winter of their life, they may spend their entire lives within a 200-yard radius of their main drumming log! Good drumming logs may be used by generations of grouse, so once you find a drummer you can often return to the area year after year to photograph the same bird or his successor. This is the behavior flaw that makes the ruffed grouse such an easy target for photographers. So, now that you have the necessary ruffed grouse biology under your belt, how can you find a drumming log and get started? Easy. Sit down in the woods at dawn, in the springtime, and listen for the rhythmic drumming of sex-starved suitors. On a still morning, with frost in the air, a human can hear a ruffed grouse drumming a quarter of a mile away. Then it's a simple matter of slowly moving closer until you finally pinpoint the bird. This can usually be achieved in less than 30 minutes of careful stalking. Another way to locate a drumming grouse is to befriend an expert. Since ruffed grouse are a hunted species, state and provincial wildlife departments manage autumn harvests of these birds. Many of these government agencies conduct an annual spring drumming census to monitor the grouse populations in their area. The biologists conducting the counts are usually happy to have people join them in the cold dark hours before dawn to keep them company, and to keep the coffee poured as they cruise up and down back roads listening for drummers. Later, when you bag the bird on celluloid you can donate photos to the department as a gesture of thanks. Many years ago, while Wayne was still in university, he arranged to accompany a provincial biologist on a spring grouse count outside of Ottawa. The guys agreed to meet at 4:30 A.M. on the edge of the city in the parking lot of a well-known drive-in theatre. Wayne was early for the rendezvous and while he was waiting, he dozed off. He was suddenly awakened by a burly police officer knocking on the car window, shining a flashlight in his face, and grilling him on what was he doing in the parking lot. Wayne mumbled something about a ruffed grouse count and the officer barked back "No jokes buddy. What are you doing here?" Eventually, the policeman believed Wayne and then proceeded to talk his ear off with grouse hunting stories, at which point the biologist arrived and rescued him. So now that you have the bird staked out, how do you go about photographing it? Although we have had grouse drum right in front of us when we were standing in the open only 60 feet away, the surest way to capture natural behavior on film is by using a photo blind. Ruffed grouse are pretty forgiving, so you can use any kind of blind that conceals your outline. A number of times we have used the discarded cardboard boxes that kitchen stoves and washing machines are shipped in. These boxes are handy for many reasons: they are free at most appliance stores, they withstand the weather for several months, they don't flap in the wind and startle your subject, and they are unattractive to thieves. Most of the time, however, we use one of our homemade fabric blinds, which are four feet square and four and a half feet tall. Both of us can fit inside and shoot simultaneously, with different focal length lenses, to capture different compositions of the same subject. Every grouse has its own tolerance level, but most woodland drummer boys will accept a blind right away if it is erected 50 feet or more away from the drumming log. At that distance, we have never had a bird take longer than about 45 minutes to hop back on the log and start drumming again. On a typical ruffed grouse photo morning, we get up long before sunrise to be inside the blind by the time the sky starts to lighten. Most grouse will continue to drum for several hours after the sun comes up, and some may persist until midday. Our usual equipment for such a blind setup is relatively simple and includes: an 80-200mm f/2.8 zoom, a 300mm f/4, and a flash. (For those of you who just nodded off while reading this scintillating checklist, don't forget to bring a couple of camera bodies as well. The lenses work better with a camera attached to one end.) Of course, the light of early dawn is always weak, so we usually start shooting with 100 or 200 ISO speed film and switch to Fujichrome Velvia as soon as the conditions brighten. Well, that's all there is to it. Like so many wildlife subjects, the biggest challenge in spring grouse photography is finding the subject. After that, virtually anyone could take the photograph. We'll leave you with one final photo tip. When you walk into your blind, approach from a direction that will drive the drummer away from all of his secondary drumming sites as well as his main drumming log. Otherwise, the birdbrain may outsmart you and beat his heart out from one of his secondary drumming sites. Meanwhile, you're sitting inside your cozy blind, gritting your teeth and fiddling with your expensive camera that is focused on a empty log dappled in spectacular morning light. Drumming Log The number of droppings on the ground beneath a drumming log is a good way to determine how much a ruffed grouse is using the site. The salty taste of the droppings can also help you decide how recently the bird was there. (Okay, how many of you would actually put a dried up grouse turd in your mouth? Don't you know you shouldn't listen to everything you read.)? Grouse at Sunset This grouse was photographed at sunset with Fujichrome Velvia film, a Nikkor 300mm f/4 lens, and balanced electronic flash set on -2/3 of a stop. We added a sepia-colored gel over the flash head to warm up the light. Slow Shutter at Sunset The circumstances were the same in this shot as they were for the previous one, but this time we used a slow shutter speed of 1/15 second which allowed the bird's wingtips to blur, and gave the illusion of movement. The lens was a Nikkor 80-200mm zoom. Displaying Male The moment a female grouse approaches a drummer you realize why the bird is called a ruffed grouse. This image was made from a blind with a 300mm lens, balanced fill flash and Fujichrome Provia 100 film. Juvenile Goshawk Always resist trimming vegetation above a ruffed grouse's drumming log. Often there is thick shrubs or tree cover over the log, and it is tempting to thin this out to permit more light to fall on the drumming bird. This overhead vegetation is crucial protection from the grouse's two lethal enemies: the great horned owl and the northern goshawk. In this photograph, a juvenile goshawk has just killed an adult ruffed grouse. This rare predation photograph was taken in mid winter, and was made with a Nikkor 600mm f/5.6 lens on Fujichrome Velvia film. For more titillating tidbits of tetraonid trivia you should read: (Note: All 17 species of grouse in the world belong to the Family Tetraonidae) 1. The Ruffed Grouse, editors Sally Atwater & Judith Schnell, Stackpole Books, 1989. 2. Ruffed Grouse - Woodland Drummer, Michael Furtman, NorthWord Press, 1999. 3. The Grouse of the World, Paul A. Johnsgard, University of Nebraska Press, 1983. 4. www.ruffedgrousesociety.org. Questions and Answers Wayne Lynch and Aubrey Lang will answer readers' questions in their bi-monthly column. They can be contacted via e-mail at this address: lynchandlang@photosafaris.com. Due to the anticipated volume of inquiries Wayne and Aubrey cannot answer questions individually, but they will cover a wide range of topics within each column. The new columns will come on-line May 1, July 1 and September 1. We look forward to hearing from you.

	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383   Fax: (206) 463-5484    Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.