Location Scouting | Filming Wildlife & Bird Photography
A Day On Location
In this video, I finally had a patch of blue sky and fair weather after weeks of wildfire smoke and decided to take advantage of it and visit the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge and do a little location scouting for filming wildlife. One of the techniques I use to get good footage of wildlife is go out and look for areas where I can get a decently reliable location to film a particular species. If you want to make a film about wildlife, it’s important to know and understand where you can find them. As I had never been to this particular wildlife refuge, I wanted to explore it and get a feel for the layout, and what I might expect to see and find there, especially after being cooped up inside my home for the past month or so!
For the past several weeks, we’ve been dealing with some of the worst wildfires in the state of Oregon’s history. On September 7, 2020, an unprecedented wind event blew 50-60 mph winds west over the cascades, bringing with it hot and dry air – the perfect recipe for hazardous fire conditions. And sure enough, fires erupted across the cascade range – and not just erupted, exploded seems more fitting. The Beachie Creek Fire went from a mere 400ish acres in the morning of the 7th, to over 100,000 acres by the next day. Adding to that, four other massive wildfires also exploded in much the same fashion. Needless to say, the Willamette Valley where I live has been inundated with heavy, thick, and unbearable smoke for the past several weeks. This has made it impossible to get out and film! I simply can’t imagine what it must be like for the wildlife in the affected areas.
So when the smoke finally cleared out, I jumped at the first opportunity to head down to Ankeny NWR and see what it’s all about. It’s a short drive from my home, so I will definitely be headed back there! Once there, I parked at the Pintail Marsh parking area and then headed with my camera gear along the trails, keeping an eye out for good places, and what type of species I could see. Of course there were plenty of mallards in the water, and a few geese as well as an egret fishing along the water’s edge.
After a short hike, I came to an open clearing of marshland, and several Northern harrier hawks were coursing over the marsh. It was a good place to set my camera up and try for a few stills. I learned right off that my new Sigma 60-600mm lens doesn’t have reliable autofocus for still photography after about 300mm length on a 1.4x teleconverter, and is fully manual with a 2x teleconverter. I actually found it didn’t even have autofocus using the 1.4x teleconverter. So… everything I filmed was all done manually!
After the northern harrier hawks had moved on, I couldn’t help but overhear the distinct calls of redwing blackbirds behind. As I turned around, there were dozens upon dozens of them in the cattails in the marsh on the opposite side of the road. I turned my camera around and began filming them using the 2x teleconverter. It was amazing how much throw I had on the lens and camera combination, at 600mm with the 2x teleconverter, my lens is sitting at 1200mm before factoring in the crop sensor of my Canon 70D which is a 1.6 crop factor, or in other words, a total of 1,920mm… Pretty insane!!
There were also some greater yellowlegs wading through the shallow marshlands as well. They are really quite fun birds to film, full of funky personality and a very staccato like walk that is rather amusing. I also saw a nutria swim across the water towards the marsh grass to feed. They’re an invasive species, but still cool to observe nonetheless!
After spending a couple hours there and filming a few rough goes of it, the light began to fade and I figured it would be best to get home and bed down for the night, just as the geese seemed to be doing! It was a successful trip. I learned that filming Northern harrier hawks is very doable here, and now the wheels are spinning to attempt filming them in much better situations. It pays off to do a little location scouting for filming wildlife! Maybe I’ll even put together a short film about them specifically. 😉
