Why I like to photograph birds around water bodies

Photos of birds I took while visiting Lac Bellevue in Alberta in 2016.

Water.  Every creature needs it.  It also happens to be where a tremendous variety of life exhists, much of which is food for others higher up the food chain.  A lot of those carnivores happen to be terrestrial in nature, and many of those happen to be birds.

The variety of birds in North America is amazing.  Around 1000 species call our continent home.  And many of them can be found in or near water.  This is one of the reasons I like to be near water when photographing nature.  I have photographed a lot of wildlife in places where surface water wasn't nearby, but I tend to have more success when around water bodies.

What's in the water that is a food source for our avian friends?  Fish is the obvious answer, but insects and other invertebrates hold the key to the entire ecosystem.  Dowitchers probe the mud with their long bills looking for fossorial food.  Swallows dart above the water's surface catching aquatic insects that have left the water and taken to wing.  Loons, cormorants, gulls, mergansers, grebes, pelicans, and more take hordes of fish.  Shorebirds glean the edges of water bodies for anything they can find.  Large avian predators like eagles, herons, osprey, egrets, and their kin hunt below the depths for vertebrates, although some will take invertebrates when given the chance.

And who can forget the waterfowl?  In North America alone there are 41 species and 174 world wide.  Even those organisms that don't take sustenance from the water are often found nearby.  Many of them need water to drink or bathe in.  

Water bodies are the places I often go to when photographing wildlife.  I am sure to find something.  Every time.  Water - the basis of life.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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