A male polar bear caught on the act of infanticide and cannibalism.

I’ve just finished the polar bear season in Churchill, Manitoba. It was a great year, fairly typical except for extremely warm temperatures. Along with the much above average temps, there was an additional event I’ll never forget. About two days into the trip we came upon a large male polar bear that was feeding on a small cub of the year. One of my associates had an obscured view of a group of polar bears behaving in an unusual and erratic manner. From a distance he saw several polar bears running wildly in a circlular motion. He drove the buggy over to the area and found this large male feeding on a very young cub of the year. He didn’t actually see the capture of the cub but surmised that’s what was going on when he witnessed the fast paced, erratic movement of a group of bears and then came upon the male feeding only minutes after the scene unfolded. These are very difficult pictures to look at and I originally hesitated putting them up on the web. So often bears of all kinds are demonized as horrific killers. In this situation this male bear fits that description. However, this is a very unusual and  rare event.  I decided to publish these images only after very careful research and insight by several world renowned polar bear scientists that weighed in on the subject. It’s documented that this year in the Churchill region there have been four instances of male polar bears preying on cubs. For the nearly thirty years that Tundra Buggy Adventures has been operating in the Wapusk National Park or the Manitoba Conservation Wildlife Management Area we have seen three instances of this nature. Typically one every ten years. So it does happen. However, this year there seemed to be a higher than normal number of these killings. There is concern that this may be a direct cause of the bears being stressed for food due to shorter time out on the sea ice where they hunt for seals. Two of the worlds foremost authorities on polar bear behavior have helped create a press release for the group I work with, Polar Bears International. You can download that press release by clicking on Polar Bear Cannibalism Media Release. I urge you to download this PDF to educate yourself about the science behind this event. Do more than most people and read facts from world authorities not just the sensationalism most people search for and create by making uneducated assumptions of their own choosing. This PDF  will give you a scientific and truthful explanation to the event as best as it can be described. I’ve created a small gallery of photos for those interested in seeing nature in all it’s truthfulness and reality. I must warn you these are not easy images to look at. They are graphic beyond belief but they depict the reality of how climate change may be effecting these magnificent animals and the ecosystem they live in. Follow this link for photos to this event. Male Polar Bear Caught in the Act of Infanticide and Cannibalism. Find out more about Polar Bears and how we can all help save the habitat they live in and save the bears themselves from this dramatic change in the weather in the arctic.

September 25, 2009 Temp 30F

My day began quite early. The alarm on my watch gently broke my slumber at the 4:00am mark. I’ve never been one to jump out of bed and this morning was no different.  I laid there curled in the fetal position on my right side trying to find the inspiration to get my ass out of bed. My mind was churning though you could never tell since it looked as though I was still asleep. As is always the case when I’m physically beat and short on sleep, I start asking myself, “Why are you doing this? What’s the purpose?” I come up with poor reasons as to why I should stay in bed and gradually as I begin to wake the voice of lethargy and laziness begins to loose it’s power. It’s replaced by the whisper of adventure and curiosity and finally the booming thunder of guilt and shame at the idea that I’m still lying there. There’s a very large boat to catch and I hauled myself out of bed to begin my journey of documenting a project for Polar Bears International highlighting scientists studying polar bears. From Bozeman to Barrow the trip begins.

A view of the Brooks Range on my way to Barrow, Alaska

Just out my window is the Brooks Range. I’m close to the end of the trip for today but just the beginning for the next five weeks. The plane I’m on includes myself and 39 other able bodied scientists, camera men and women, coast guard personnel and others that are winging our way to meet up with the US military icebreaker, Polar Sea. It’s a big ship, 399 feet from stem to stern. It displaces 13, 500 tons and can travel at 3 knots through ice six feet thick. There’s only one country with more muscle in the ice breaker department and that’s Russia. The Soviets use nuclear power to thrust them along. The US does not. In any case for what we plan to do she’s plenty worthy. Our mission? To study polar bears that are living on the arctic ice pack. I’ve worked with several of the scientists that are on this expedition. I’m excited to see George Durner and Eric Regehr two friends I’ve made from past science adventures.

See Photos From the Polar Sea Icebreaker Expedition

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Robert Buchanan of Polar Bears International addresses The Polar Bears Sustainability Alliance

This past week I spent time in Portland, Oregon shooting photos and attending meetings with Polar Bears International. PBI was asked to join the Association of Zoos and Aquariums  at their annual conference. PBI’s mission to help all polar bears includes working with zoos and aquariums which have tremendous outreach to help educate the public to the issues effecting the climate and eventually the habitat polar bears call home. Jane Goodall was there to give the keynote address and it was hearing her speak is always incredibly inspirational. You can see more photos from the event by clicking on the following link Portland PBI Event

For those of you interested in doing your own printing you should check out  my good friend and master printer extraordinar David Saffir’s upcoming  printing workshops. He’s a great guy and has been extremely helpful in  guiding me and my office staff in our quest to produce the highest quality Limited Edition Fine Art Prints. Take a look at the cities he will be visiting Digital 2 You

Our ship sails along in the midnight sun with walrus

A bit of history about this beautiful place known as     Svalbard/Spitsbergen. Svalbard is situated between 74° and 81°  (northern latitude) and 10° and 35° (eastern longitude) and is a    group of islands known as an archipelago. The area compromises  a land surface of over 61,000 sq km. Glaciers cover over 22,000 sq  km of this arctic landscape. the Vikings were the first to find this  ”cold edge” or Svalbard as their language described it. Later, an  explorer name Willem Barents found several islands of the      archipelago in 1595 and called the main one Spitsbergen. Not long after Barents arrived, soon came the whalers who believed for a long time that Spitsbergen/Svalbard was a part of Greenland. Eventfully this was proven to not be the case and in 1925, Norway was granted sovereignty over Spitsbergen and along with it the opportunity to introduce the old Viking term, Svalbard.

My reason for taking this adventure is to continue my work with Polar Bears International in my quest to document the arctic. This part of the world is predicted to change dramatically in the next several decades and it’s my goal to have a visual record of what parts of it was like before the changes took place. Many of the images I collect will be used in a forth coming book as well as be available for many of the other projects PBI is involved with. The following photographs were shot during a 21 day period.

To see a gallery of images from the trip click on this link Svalbard Polar Expedition

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After working on this story for nearly 5 years it’s finally been published. I want to thank Denver Holt of the Owl Research Institute and Graham Frey of the Rocky Mountain Front Institute of Natural History. Both of these guys are superb biologists and great friends. None of this work would have been possible without them. Thanks to John Nuhn at the National Wildlife Federation as well. I’ve been working with John since 1981 and it’s an understatement to say we go way back.

All of the images in this piece were shot in Montana. I first became interested in the Pygmy Owl due to a chance encounter on the deck of my home in the mountains outside of Bozeman. I had just gotten out of bed, had made coffee and was sipping a cup of joe looking out the large glass doors of our kitchen. It was early January and it had snowed the night before. The mountains were beautiful and deck was covered in what looked like eight inches of power sugar. As I stood there admiring the incredible beauty of this glorious winter day a bolt of feathers comes blasting out of the trees to my right, headed straight towards a chickadee foraging at the feeder. I instinctively knew it was a predator and began banging the glass window with the back of my hand. The loud commotion worked and the little bird was dropped. He was alive but stunned lying in  the snow. I opened the door and picked him up, put him in a box next to the wood stove and waited until he regained his senses. While waiting I went back over to the door, looked out and on the rail of the deck was a little owl. I was amazed at how small he was. He flew down to the spot the chickadee had fallen, sniffed the snow as if trying to track the injured prey and then bolted off into the trees. This all happened within a 30 second time frame. That’s all I saw of this dynamic diminutive creature.

I get my bird book out and tracked him down as most likely being a northern pygmy owl. I was hooked and would now spend the next ten years trying to get closer and find out more about this charismatic little owl These pictures are the culmination of my search. I hope you enjoy them.

Follow this link to see additional photos that weren’t used in the NWF article

Natural Exposures/Daniel J. Cox has had a web presence and online searchable database since 1996 and was one of the first independent photographers to offer such a service. It was prehistoric based on todays standards but we knew that photos not viewable to the outside world were basically the same as nonexistent. Technology continues to change and we’re changing with it. We would like everyone to know that this past month we added a new and improved searchable, photo, database so clients can find our pictures more efficiently. We’ve teamed up with PhotoShelter to offer this huge step in speed and ease of use. We would be grateful for anyone interested to stop by and give it a try. Thanks to those of you who have worked with us directly over the years. In these difficult times your commitment to working with individual photographers is even more important to a world of quality choices in natural history photography.  Take a look at the new database and let us know what you think. Follow this link to Search for Photos

For the past five years I’ve been predicting that the day was not far off where we would see the convergence of still and video images. About 3 or 4 years ago a new video camera was introduced called Red One. It shoots such high quality video that you can actually pull still images from the files it creates and use those individual images in printed materials.  Take a look at the current upcoming cover of Esquire magazine. I’m often asked by my workshop students, university students I work with here in Bozeman and others from across the web, how to get in to the business of wildlife and nature photography? My standard response in the past several years has been, “don’t even think about becoming a still shooter. You need to learn how to shoot moving images. Movies are the future. It won’t be long before the still shooter is nothing different than the guy who used to shovel coal in to steam trains and eventually lost his job due to trains moving to diesel power.” Still shooters could very well go the way of the dinosaur.

I wasn’t exactly excited about this move I knew I would have to eventually make, but…… I’ve done it. I recently took a course from a gentleman named Bill Gentile of American University in Silver Spring, Maryland. It was sponsored by PBS. Bill was originally a still photographer working in South America documenting wars, poverty etc. That was back in the 70’s and 80’s and he saw the train coming then. He moved in to video production in the early 90’s and has been shooting for some of the top news organizations evert since. Clients such as PBS, ABC TV and many others. Bill’s course was called Backpack Journalism and it was a great way for me to jump in head first. So without further ado I would like to present my first semi-serious film. It was shot with a Canon XH G1 HD video camera and was produced using Final Cut Pro. It’s not wildlife or nature but it’s about one of my other favorite subjects–Art

If I recall correctly we had 15 students in our class. We were instructed to come up with an idea, shoot it, edit and produce the final piece all in four days. As a group we voted on what we thought were the best films with the winners  honored by being featured on the PBS web site. You can see the winning entries for yourself at Backpack Journalism & PBS. I won’t be winning any Academy Awards with it but it’s a start.

Take a look at A New Face in Town

A New Face in Town from Daniel J. Cox on Vimeo.

There are few people on this earth who truly represent kindness, goodness and a sense of holiness. Fewer still are able to project that aura to the masses, inspiring others with a sense of wonder, respect, admiration and a desire to follow. Meeting the standards of a saint, or maybe an angel, is a tall task. I’ve heard people like Mother Teresa, Ghandi and the Dali Lama described in such a manner, but until last week I had never met such a person—aside from my mother, who represents many of those traits within her own  family. That changed when I was fortunate enough to meet Dr. Jane Goodall at a recent workshop. See the photos from the workshop with Jane Goodall.

I had traveled to the beautiful city of Ottawa, Ontario, to work with my friends and colleagues, Julene Reed of Roots & Shoots and Robert Buchanan of Polar Bears International (PBI). PBI had volunteered to help Dr. Goodall’s prosperous and growing conservation group, Roots & Shoots, by hosting a workshop at Algonquin College. Roots & Shoots is described on its website as   “The Jane Goodall Institute’s global network of youth taking action to make the world a better place. With tens of thousands of members in almost 100 countries, Roots & Shoots connects youth around the world who are creating positive change for people, animals and the environment.”

PBI’s role at the conference consisted of a workshop for young people interested in how climate change will effect the Arctic and polar bears in particular. Since the main theme of the conference was water, it was important for us to connect the consequences of the world’s dwindling water supply with the effects this will have on polar bears and other species, including humans. Robert, Julene and I talked to the students about how essential ice is for polar bears and how life for this species will end without it.  I compared the Arctic’s melting ice pack with the disappearing glaciers in the Himalayas. I emphasized that this warming climate will not just affect polar bears, but millions and millions of humans as well–humans in places such as India where they desperately need the water that flows from the glaciers in the surrounding mountains. As the arctic ice melts so goes the ice from the Himalayan peaks that has watered the masses for eons in the valleys down river.

The morning began with lots of sobering news and negative information, but ended in the afternoon with a message of hope. Hope that with enough action on the part of today’s youth, we can stop humanity’s role in contributing to the global melt-down. Hope that we all have the capacity to change and that change we must. It was inspiring to see so many young people concerned and determined, and I was proud to be a small part of that energy.

This begins my first blog for the new section on the PBI web site appropriately titled Arctic Exposures. You’ll be able to view it on the PBI site as well as here on our Natural Exposures blog we affectionately call the Corkboard. For those who aren’t familiar with my work, I’m currently an advisory board member for Polar Bears International. I’m also a professional photographer. My wife and I run a small company that markets my fine art photographic prints and documentary work and we employ two other people besides ourselves. Both of them seem like family. We call our little business Natural Exposures and so the connection to Arctic Exposures is established.
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