Białowieża Forest

Poland is home to Europes last remaining wild Bison. I went there on a tour with Wildlife Worldwide, and the tour leader is world reknowned photographer Sean Weekly. This is a bit fancier than what I'd normally go for, but a recent event in my personal life left me wanting to give the credit card a workout.

Poland is very big and very flat. I thought I knew what a flat place was living on the borders of the Cambridgeshire Fens and spending alot of time in Norfolk. Somehow, Poland is even flatter than that. It's a bit like driving through Lincolnshire, except after 4 hours of it there's still plenty left.

Arriving at the small town of Białowieża I got settled into the accomodation. Much nicer than I'm used to - I had a whole apartment to myself!

The first day of photography was a 'Bison Safari' where we maraud around the backroads of the forest with our guide Marian, trying to find Bison. It didn't take too long and we located a small herd, just the other side of a river. With the river keeping us apart, the Bison were very relaxed. The group was females and juveniles - the dads are deadbeats and mostly hang out on their own. They are much cuter in real life, like strange fluffy cows. It's a real nuisance trying to photo them as they are almost always never lined up nicely. I got close to the magic shot of them all facing the right direction...but not quite.

Day two was in what I'ved decided the call 'The FOMO Hide'. It's split into to parts, one facing an open field and the other facing a reflection pool. It's not easy to move between the two of them, so if something's going on the side that you aren't in, then you aren't photographing. Thus the FOMO. The field is targeting White-tailed Eagle / Goshawk, and the reflection pool is for the regular woodland birds. The morning brought the biggest baddest Buzzard I've ever seen and a very dapper Raven. In the afternoon I gave the reflection pool a whirl and had fun especially with Nuthatch and Middle Spotted Woodpecker (which was a lifer). The Goshawk touched down a couple of times, but only stayed long enough to get the lens on it at the end of the day. There was an overflight from a White Tailed Eagle, but no landings.

Day three was all day in the Eagle hide. This is an extremely impressive hide with floor to ceiling Stopsol one way glass - the kind made popular by Bence Mate. While I've been in plenty of glass fronted hides, I've never been in one with quite this much of it. It's very very cool, with a huge amount of visibility. There's a shelf for plonking your camera on if you wanted to shoot from a seated position of you can lie on the ground for a eye-level shot. Unfortunately, none of that mattered on this day...the atmosphere had other ideas. The temperature had been hovering around freezing and it and snowed a little. Enough to coat the ground in water, but not enough to settle. This meant that once the sun and come up over the hide, the air was warm enough to just melt the snow - and form a haze. This meant that sharp photos weren't going to be much of a thing, regardless of what I tried. There was a visit by a White Tailed Eagle and Buzzards were present most of the day. We also saw a Goshawk, this one with the reddest eyes I've seen. Clearly a venerable individual. Still, this was a day more for birdwatching than photography.

Before the final Bison Safari, the temperature plumeted to -10C. It was a balmy -5C by the time we were in the field. It was a morning of insane golden light, light that we knew wouldn't be around for too long so it was a rush to find some Bison before it went. Luckily for us Marian came up with the cows and we got a few shots of them in the distance before they decided they didn't like the look of us. The afternoon was amusing, with us prowling around the forest, finding more than Bison. Some enterprising locals had worked out the easiest way to see the Bison was to find Marians car and then follow him - from a a respectful distance of course. We managed to a get a little closer to the Bison that before - albeit under strict instruction from Marian. I finally managed to get a shot of them facing the same direction.

The final day was a hide day - this one a reflection pool again. The star of the day was a Red Squirrel who came and went constantly throughout the day.

This was a wonderful trip and it was great to be photographing mammals from a change. I probably spend too much time concentrating on birds. You can book the full tour yourself here, or you can reach out to Marian directly for guiding services.