This in turn attracts ospreys, bald eagles, otters, bears, etc. Just as an example of the importance of woodpeckers to this habitat, there are over 30 different vertebrate species that depend upon the pileated woodpecker’s abandoned cavities alone. As woodpeckers move in and out, they leave behind cavities which are then taken over by wood ducks, bufflehead (ducks), screech owls, blue birds, and a grocery list of other species. These trees become magnets for insects, which in turn become magnets for woodpeckers and warblers. As the forest floods out because of the beavers, dead standing trees are created. You can pretty much count on some sort of wildlife activity in these areas.īy creating a small pond in or at the edge of the forest, the beaver inadvertently creates the ultimate wildlife habitat in the area. Much like understanding the ecology of a single species that you are pursuing, photographing around these sorts of ecotones takes a lot of the chance out of wildlife photography. So, think of edges in general – that is to say, where the edge of one habitat bumps into another. Remember, this is just a place where diversity increases due to the overlap of two distinctly different habitats. You don’t necessarily need a body of water to create an ecotone though. So, you can take that 67 species and easily add an additional 15 that only live in these sorts of ecotones and now you have 82 different species all potentially at your fingertips. Though an ecotone may be the joining of the species between habitat A and habitat B, the ecotone itself technically constitutes as a habitat C, complete with its own unique assemblage of plants and animals. But there is more to this than meets the eye. Where these two habitats overlap, that number goes up to 67 right off the bat (40 + 27). Let’s say that habitat A typically holds 40 different species of photographable animals (birds, mammals, reptiles, etc). Such situations have the potential to increase species diversity exponentially. Ecotones are those areas where two distinctly different habitats overlap. Even if certain animals do not live full time in and around that water, a place like a beaver pond, for instance, will eventually attract just about every animal in the vicinity over the course of the day.Ĭase in point: there is one particular pond in Grand Teton National Park that I can predictably find black bears, elk, moose, swans, woodpeckers, a host of different species of waterfowl, ospreys, and bald eagles – all within a 1 mile paddle along its protected waters.Īside from being the substance of life itself, watery environments also create what ecologists call ecotones. Like the water cooler in the office, it’s a gathering point. When a more generalist approach is the name of the game for the day, then the number one thing that you can do to significantly enhance your photographic opportunities is to head towards water. Far more common is the simple goal of finding ANYTHING at all to photograph. Not everyone leaves the house at 4:30am in search of a particular species to photograph.
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