Pursuing Peregrine Falcons in Acadia

Dear Friends,
 
This summer, my travels for several international projects were of course put on hold, but an opportunity came up with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to film birds in Acadia National Park.  I needed a team to assist me, and fortunately my two children, 16 year old Jessica, and 19 year old Russell, were home and available.  They have had many years experience assisting me in the field, so with my “quaranteam” in place and our negative covid tests in hand, we headed to Maine to isolate ourselves in the mountains and attempt to film peregrine falcons.
 
Acadia National Park is one of the places where the critically endangered peregrine falcon was re-introduced to the wild in the 1980’s, and has been successfully breeding since the early 90’s.  With the park biologists unable to do fieldwork this year due to covid, our mission was to visit two of the cliff-top breeding sites, and document how many juvenile birds had fledged, and to try to capture some footage of the young birds for a video to be produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Stay tuned for that later this fall, but in the mean time, here are a few images I can share of these amazing birds.

Featured Photos

Adults like this bird only passed by a couple times a day, but were clearly distinct with their black head and white neck.

 Here you can see in detail the juvenile plumage of a falcon as it comes right toward me. The juveniles still used the cliffs where their nest had been as their home base, and came back repeatedly throughout the day.

I was lucky enough to capture a moment when two juveniles briefly flew together.  It was amazing to see the maneuverability and speed of these birds in the air, including sudden dives, turns, and even back flips.  If they decided to go into a dive and drop out of the frame, it was impossible to track them.

Looking down towards from above Valley Cove, I got this shot of a young falcon over the beautiful water of Somes Sound.

We had a couple lucky moments when young falcons landed in trees near us on the cliff top.  Russell captured this shot of a bird stretching his wings before takeoff.

For the photography nerds in the group, these images are all still frames from motion capture on my RED Digital Cinema Helium 8K camera, shot at 6K and 75fps at a 1/150 sec shutter speed.  While many frames of course have motion blur that makes the video flow naturally, there are moments when my focus, camera panning, and the birds motion all align and the frame is tack sharp.  Since each frame of 6K RED footage is a 20 megapixel RAW file, they are totally usable as still images matching the best digital SLR in quality.  Pretty amazing how far camera tech has come!  I can’t wait to share the finished video with you all through Cornell later this year.

Behind the Scenes Shots

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  One highlight was when Jessica and I were exploring for viewpoints along the cliff top, and this juvenile falcon landed in front of us.  Jessica hauled the heaviest tripod up the mountain, and was our chief bird spotter.

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  Russell reaches the top of the Jordan cliffs.  He shot on a second camera to give us two angles and more chances of capturing good behavior.

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  Tim filming from the cliffs above Jordan Pond – a spectacular location to spend a day.  Trying to get a falcon in the frame and in focus as it rocketed past the cliffs was a very fun challenge!

Gallery Update: 
 
LIMITED EDITIONS: COMING SOON!  -- The major project we are currently working on in the studio is preparing a selection of my very best images from twenty-five years of wildlife photography to offer as LIMITED EDITION collector’s prints.  These will be offered as 48 inches or 60 inches in width (large!), printed on archival aluminum, framed and signed, and have an edition of only 10 or 20 artworks.  We are very pleased with how our test prints have come out, and we are now working on the website prior to our launch. 
 
 
Thanks for reading.  Despite these crazy times, I hope you are getting outside like I am to enjoy wildlife and nature wherever you can!
 
Stay safe everyone!
Tim