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wolven

Eyes seen by no other eye

Posted on 10 May 2018 6 Comments

A long time ago, when I was cute and little, my dad used to take me out in the forest every weekend.

He was a hunter, with a profound knowledge of big mammals and their ecology. The type of hunter that uses his binoculars way more than he uses his rifle. I did not follow in his footsteps however, but took the photographic approach when it concerns big game tracking. Especially those with large canine teeth.

One of my favourite carnivore regions in Europe is Bieszczady, Poland. Vast forests cover thousands of acres and contain some of the highest densities of Bear, Lynx and Wolf in Europe. Also, this is where the European Bison still roams freely.

It was my fifth visit to Bieszczady and this is what I had seen so far on my previous trips:

  • One time Eurasian Lynx
  • Three times wolf
  • 0 bears
  • Many bison

Simply Implying it is far from easy to see large carnivores in the wild. Yet we were in the best season with quiet forests (hunting stops in December, so the forests had been deserted for four months), combined with hungry bears awakening from hibernation.

Bieszczady in spring time. What’s not to like. This beaver made himself a nice swimming pool.

A spring trip aimed at tracking down wolves, was the purpose of my voyage. And since these are so hard to find, I decided to take my own master tracker. Who had never seen wolves in the wild.

Selfie skill level: below zero

Spring ahoy

Cuckoo singing. Is there a more typical sound of spring?

Grey wagtail in a rapid of the mighty river San. Long exposure.

 

A life lasting maybe five centuries. Seemingly doing it without effort. I just love big trees, like this Linden.

A lot of time was spent scanning the open meadows, since April means grazing time for bison and bear.

Define luxury

Holidays are meant to be relaxing, and this poses a problem when you visit Bieszczady in April: No chicks, No beach, But lots of sun!

However, the sun rises at 5am this time of year. So you kinda have to be in the forest by 4am.

Meaning we had to push ourselves and do quiet hikes at dusk and dawn… With result:

 

Red deer with a one year old calf. Mom was pregnant, which means that soon this calf was going to be pushed away.
Such one year old calf has never left the side of its mom, and one day just simply is pushed away (rather hard). Nature and its mysterious ways never ceases to amaze.

Meadows are nice and often show you wildlife, but many of the good stuff never leaves the forest. I stalked this shy roe deer buck and was able to observe him. Approaching a big boy like this is hard, they are very wary and you have to crawl up to them from under the wind.

Bison were only reintroduced in the Carpathian mountains during the sixties, and all animals nowadays are descendant of just 12 (!) founding animals (of which 11 were low-land bison (Bialowieza), the remaining bull originating from the Carpathian mountains). This means that maintaining -and even creating- genetic diversity of the 3000 animals currently alive, is the highest priority. That is why animals even have been caught, and placed in other herds.

End of April truly is the best time since bison leave the forest and go grazing.

Two bulls

All this walking yielded results. We stumbled upon a foraging bear and we saw this wolf patrolling his territory:

But no closer images.

We reckoned the time had come to sit in hides. There are two hides that have been successful over the past years. One is owned by Jan Kelchtermans (Europesbig5), the other is owned by a local Polish guy who dumps some meat in the forest every day for his local wolf pack. Both these hides are good at some times, but not so good at other times. Large carnivores have huge home ranges and often stay away for days when they made a kill somewhere far away. Luckily the meat also attracts raptors like this Lesser spotted eagle and Golden eagle.

During the night, we could see bears in the moonlight as well:

Brown bear taken at ISO 10000 in almost complete darkness. We named him Rambo, because he was bloody huge.

But what we really really wanted to see closer, were wolves. Only once in all these years of mammal watching, have I seen a wolf closer than 50m (Spain). I took a few images of that one, but wanted more.

Seeing wolves is possible in Bieszczady, but having a good chance at photographing them… that is an entire different story.

I had long heard of a local guy where several people got lucky, he could not promise us anything but we went for it and spent several 18 hour waiting sessions in the hide.

With result! There was a pack of nine animals that only came after dusk and before dawn, but there was a solitary wolf that occurred several times during good light.

When this walks out of the forest and looks straight into your lens, shit becomes holy.

The look wolves have, is simply beyond anything else.

We are coming for you

And all of a sudden they start to play and cuddle

But only when they come close, you can “read” their insanely grey eyes.

Alfa male, on the only time he was calm enough to approach us. Never ever looking away. Wary, because of the camera sounds.

It was an amazing experience to spend time with this pack. Seeing social behaviour, the alfa and beta roles, and seeing how nine animals work together as one being, made a big impression on me.

One example: they never just come out of the forest all together. No, there is a scout, that checks the feeding place first and wanders all around it, then going back in the forest, followed by the pack carefully getting into the meadow.

On two occasions the pack started howling at night, super close to the hide, and we got an impression what it must be like to live in the forest and hear the top predator at night.

It is clear I can talk for a few more hours about wolves. For now I let the images speak.

Take care

Karl

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: Geen categorie, Reizen | Tagged: bieszczady, canis lupus, wolf, wolven

Cry Wolf

Posted on 19 September 2011 2 Comments

In the previous weeks a wolf/several wolves were seen in the Netherlands and one was observed in Belgium… People were amazed. Pages and pages of newspapers and magazines are now stuffed with wolf tales.

The image of large carnivores in modern Europe often appears incongruous to many people.

Fifty years ago the situation for our large carnivores looked bleak. As a result of human persecution and transformation of the European landscape, populations had declined to the extent that they were absent from vast parts of the continent. Only some small relicts remained, in the mountains and around the edges of Europe. The specter of regional extinction was hanging in the air!

But large carnivores have shown they can live beside us in our modified cultural landscapes and nowadays the situation is transformed beyond recognition. Wolves have recolonized Scandinavia, Germany and the Alps. Relict populations in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and the Baltics are expanding. Eurasian lynx populations are starting to reoccupy most of their former distributions in Scandinavia, the Baltic and the Carpathians, and reintroductions have returned them to many parts of the Alps and central Europe. Bear populations in Scandinavia, the Balkan and the Carpathians are reaching higher sizes. Wolverines have returned to southern Scandinavia, and even recolonized low-lying forest areas.

There probably have not been more large carnivores in Europe for more than a century.

Can we rise to the challenges of having wild neighbors?

Then we will have to accept that livestock may be lost, keeping in mind that the economic value of this lost livestock is insignificant compared to the financial value of these carnivores.

Also, hunters –being self-proclaimed nature lovers- must accept that the top carnivore has a right of living where it has lived for thousands of years. An important message here is that  big carnivores also kill smaller carnivores (eg. foxes, martens etc.) and not only herbivores, which drastically reduces the presumed effects on herbivore populations.

Finally we have to think big: large carnivores need lots of space and linking the many Natura 2000 sites across Europe could supply an important refuge and core habitat.

Here my wolf images from earlier this year.

Posted in: Dieren | Tagged: wolf, wolven, wolves

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