Breeding Birds of the High Arctic – Cambridge Bay

Instructor: David Hemmings

Producer: Natures Photo Adventures

Price: $6,495 CAD

Starts: 2012-06-23

Ends: 2012-07-03

Workshop Overview:
Cambridge Bay is known for its great wildlife, flora, landscape and landmarks. Cambridge Bay is a community of approximately 1400 people, the majority being Inuit. Although English is widely spoken throughout the community, Inuinnaqtun is the traditional language of the Inuit people of Cambridge Bay. The bird photography opportunities here will be astounding. Nature’s Photo Adventures has teamed up with Jim Richards, one of the most experienced and knowledgeable bird guides of the Canadian Arctic. Within walking distance of the community, you’ll discover many archeological sites as you venture near the river to the northeast and further into the Mount Pelly and Ovayok Territorial Park area.

We start our adventure the first day of your arrival as it is light here for 24 hours a day in June/July. Our main priority on this photo adventure will be to photography Snowy Owls on their nests bringing building material and food to the nest with the young owlets. Every year in the Arctic can be different from the previous year in regards to finding the Snowy Owl nests as they do not habitually nest at the same location yearly. It is largely dependent on the food supply, mostly lemmings, being readily available. If it is a good year for lemmings, it will likely be a good year for Snowy Owl nests. The food supply is also a direct factor in determining how many owlets the parents have on a given nest, usually anywhere from 4-12 eggs. Another factor we are faced with is the food supply can’t be determined until the snow is mostly melted in June so it is impossible to know well enough in advance what the food supply situation will be for that year. We will do our best to source out and set up near the nests to photograph the ‘snowies’ on their nests but please note for this particular workshop these magnificent creatures present the following terms:
There is no 100% guarantee that we will find nesting Snowy Owls to photograph. However, there are an abundant amount of other species to photograph on this trip. Please note the list below:

Highly likely to see and photograph on and near nests:
Pacific Loon, Yellow-billed Loon, Cackling Goose, Brant, Long-tailed Duck, Common Eider, King Eider, Peregrine Falcon, Black-bellied Plover, American Golden-Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Ruddy Turnstone, Pectoral Sandpiper, Baird’s Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Stilt Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope, Red Phalarope, Glaucous Gull,Herring Gull,Sabine’s Gull, Arctic Tern, Long-tailed Jaeger, Horned Lark, American Pipit, Lapland Longspur, Snow Bunting

Likely to see and photograph on or near nests: Parasitic Jaeger, Pomarine Jaeger, Snowy Owl, Short-eared Owl
Species we should see but are difficult to get close to: Rough-legged Hawk, Tundra Swan, Northern Pintail
Mammal species include: Muskox, Arctic Hare, Collared Lemming, Arctic Fox and Ermine.

NUNAVUT- CAMBRIDGE BAY Nesting Snowy Owls and Breeding Arctic Birds SPECIES: Snowy Owl, Pacific Loon, Yellow-billed Loon, King Eider, Snow Bunting, Peregrine Falcon, Black-bellied Plover…etc. There are 105 species of birds in Nunavut and 48 of them breed at Cambridge Bay. This is an exciting not to be missed opportunity to photograph nesting Snowy Owls and numerous breeding birds of the Arctic tundra. Along the shores of the Queen Maud Gulf on the southeast coast of Victoria Island, nestled beside high hills, lies Cambridge Bay, beautiful rolling tundra blossoming with colorful wildflowers in July. It is also blossoming with numerous species of Arctic tundra breeding birds. Among these species is the beautiful Snowy Owl.

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