Weather and Wildlife: Predicting Behavior

Winter is coming and with it so much change and opportunity for us wildlife photographers across those latitudes north of the tropics – if only one knows how to take advantage of such changes.

While weather is always a driving force in the daily lives of wild animals, dictating migration, breeding, movements across territories, how they hunt, how they feed, how they live and die on planet Earth, it’s winter weather that is the great equalizer.

Every animal has its strategy for survival come winter, the ways in which it responds to daily changes such as barometric pressure, windstorms, rain, snow, warmups, and sudden drops in temperature. If we understand how animals respond to such things, how individual species react to the many variables and hardships of the season, we can increase our success rates as photographers exponentially.

If you have been reading my articles on wildlife photography for any amount of time, then you likely know I hold the perspective that all the technical know-how, the expensive equipment, the big glass, and the sophisticated autofocus systems amount to nothing if we can’t find animals to photograph. This, more than anything else, is the biggest limiting factor in the game. It’s the secret sauce of success regardless of how one measures success.

As the old saying goes, “if you want to make better photographs, find better opportunities to photograph.”

Weather dictates just about everything with my photography and how I approach the day, week, or month in the field. Sure, I don’t want to be outside in the rain any more than an owl does (owls traded weather proofing for silent flight). But this isn’t just about pretty versus bad weather, blue skies versus clouds. There is so much science and biology behind it all.

Take waterfowl for instance, that catchall term for ducks, geese, and swans. If temperatures rise above 45 degrees Fahrenheit (around 7 degrees Celsius) they don’t have to feed during the day. They can limit all their activity to the dark of night to conceal themselves– a solid strategy given that predators like bald eagles, snowy owls, and humans all have powerfully acute eyesight that’s dependent on available light. But when those temperatures drop below 45 degrees during the day, ducks, geese, and swans are forced to eat to keep their metabolic furnace burning to stay warm.

Likewise, on a day that most of us would consider to be beautiful – blue skies and a lot of sun – waterfowl are the most weary and skittish. Their regularly scheduled predators are all diurnal species that need the sun to see. So, waterfowl are jumpy, they spook at shadows, silhouettes, or even a distant glint of light that could be the reflection bouncing of a predator moving about. On a beautiful sunny day, especially one with little wind, these birds tend to disperse and move out into wide open bodies of water where they can see long distances all around them and you or I can’t reach them.

Let a low-pressure system come rolling in, however, and every changes. Low pressure systems mean falling temperatures, wind, rain, maybe snow, possibly freezing bodies of water. Waterfowl respond to this by relaxing and becoming much less skittish. These birds move to smaller bodies of water, open pockets in swamps, potholes in marsh, areas that are accessible to wildlife photographers.

Because of the falling temperatures and a falling barometric pressure, these birds have no idea if they will even be able to find food in the coming days with the possibility of heavy snow or shallow water freezing over. So, they become preoccupied with eating like their lives depend upon it – because it does.

While some species like snow geese and tundra swans have shifted away from their natural habitat and food sources in the winter months, congregating in mind boggling numbers out in the grainfields of the southern United States with extraordinary predictability, these birds still juggle caloric demands with the likelihood of predation. And that means they behave exactly as you would expect to temperatures, light, and low-pressure systems as well.

For ducks, thanks to their food being found in shallow water, ice is always a factor they must consider. As a rule of thumb, mature ducks tend to always stay one step ahead of ice, migrating and moving only so far as to have access to open water. Juveniles and non-breeders will fly thousands of miles, and head straight to warmer locations. But for breeding adults, the first ones back to the nesting grounds get the best spots. So, they tend to remain as far north as possible. Exactly how far north, or south, is dictated by cold fronts and temperatures, and it’s why places like Yellowstone National Park hold huge numbers of waterfowl in the winter, in spite of elevation and latitude, thanks to geothermally heated waters that never freeze.

If I’m focusing my efforts on waterfowl in the winter – and to let you in on a secret: good photographs of waterfowl are always in very high demand – then you better believe I’m studying the weather. If temperatures plunge to the north, guaranteeing prime waterfowl habitat will freeze over, I shift my efforts accordingly to make sure I am just south of this when it happens. If a big low-pressure system is on the horizon, then I clear my calendar and plan for several days of non-stop photography. If temperatures warm above 45 degrees, I find something else to do with myself.

If you’re a wildlife photographer anywhere across the northern hemisphere that has open water right now, you are likely inundated with waterfowl from around this time of the year on through March when the full moon triggers their mass exodus back north. Understanding how the lives of these birds is orchestrated by the weather this time of year can mean the difference between filling memory cards and being skunked.

Every animal is like this to some degree. From bobcats to bobwhites, from Eurasian eagle owls to ermine, weather, especially in the winter, governs all.

So important is understanding this and the patterns that emerge from it all in being able to find and predict the behavior of wildlife, that I’m working on a feature article about this topic for the upcoming issue of PhotoWILD Magazine. From finding great gray owls to photographing bobcats, this feature will help you understand how to predictably find and photograph wildlife throughout the winter from the tundra to the the tropics.

I’m considering expanding this to a year-long series. How animals respond to weather is not limited to the winter. Each season holds its nuances and I think it’s high time this was a topic we discussed because understanding such things will completely change your success as a wildlife photographer.