Dave Ellis’ Kawarthas-A Unique View of Our Region Through Wildlife Photography

KAWARTHA LAKES-Over the years, Dave Ellis has produced some incredible wildlife photographs—the kind of shots that everyone else only dreams about. In recent years his unique talents have been recognized, as he has published a weekly column in the Peterborough Examiner (Peterborough This Week/Kawartha Lakes This Week). His photos have been featured in Outdoor Canada Magazine, the Toronto Star, PTBO News, Canadian Geographic Magazine and will be featured in an upcoming John McQuarrie coffee table book. He and his wife Astrid publish annual wildlife calendars. It has taken a lot of devotion to become the Kawartha Lakes’ best-known wildlife photographer. 

Few people realize the amount of dedication that it takes to capture such amazing wildlife photographs. Dave spends countless hours, sometimes days, standing still, waiting for the perfect shot. “If you are not poised, with your finger on the button ready to shoot, you will miss it. When the action happens you only have a few seconds to get focused on your subject and get the picture. If you are not waiting behind the camera, it will take too long. You have to be standing, ready, watching the sky or scene to take that perfect picture. In the winter it can be -15 or -20 degrees and sometimes you can’t feel your fingers on the buttons anymore.”

“I can’t do it as long as Dave can,” Astrid explains. “I have learned to be more patient, and I enjoy being out in nature.” For Dave it is like military discipline, standing still in a swamp in bug season while the mosquitoes eat him alive. It takes a really special person to be a great wildlife photographer. One time Dave fell in the swamp with his high-quality camera and there he was soaking wet, holding the camera up out of the water. He didn’t mind getting wet as long as the camera didn’t. 

Dave and Astrid took up wildlife photography as a retirement project. Dave grew up in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, and moved to Edmonton in 1979, where he learned photography with a Minolta SLR film camera. Two years later he moved to Toronto to operate a handicraft business in the Gould Street vending mall just off of Yonge St., where he met Astrid. “I have always been interested in photography. When I was in my 20s, I sold my fishing boat so I could buy a camera, but back then they did not have the lenses and cameras that they have today. Through my whole life I dabbled in photography.” He got a lot of practice, photographing their handcraft merchandise while working in Toronto. 

After 20 years in Toronto, Astrid and Dave decided to move to the Kawarthas. They agree that it was the best move they ever made. Dave had made leather handicrafts, cut gems and made jewellery. He had intended to continue this work in the Kawarthas, but found that a home shop was not feasible. They enjoyed canoeing and fishing together, then bought cameras and fell in love with nature photography.

“One day, when we were on the Otonabee River, we saw someone taking a picture of a bird on the ice. We realized that it was a bald eagle, and from that point on became more and more fascinated with nature photography. I soon realized that I needed a bigger lens,” Dave explains. The equipment to be able to take such gorgeous photographs costs a lot but once he was properly equipped, Dave made the most of his gear. In 2018 the local paper expressed an interest in his nature photography and it soon led to his photographs and stories being published in a weekly column. 

As they have spent countless hours together—often 40 to 60 hours per week—carefully observing local fauna, Dave and Astrid have a unique story to share about the region. Many days they leave home at 4 am and don’t get back until dark. It is something really special to be able to watch bald eagles feed their young or seeing a snowy owl for the first time. 

One of their fondest memories is a time they spent observing a family of foxes. “We had found their den and spent weeks hanging out around them taking pictures,” Dave recalls. “We were trying to stay inconspicuous and not intrude on them but the fox had another plan. The mother fox was raising the kits on her own. Something must have happened to the father. The sly mother fox quickly saw the advantage in this situation and began using us as a babysitter. At first, when she brought them past us the little foxes ran away. They had been taught to avoid humans, but she wanted them to come by, so she went by two or three times with them. She made them pass by us to get used to us. She wanted to leave the little foxes where we were, while she was going off to hunt. She knew that if they were there with us, no other danger would come around. As the cool morning had warmed up I had thrown my jacket on the grass. The mother fox went to where my jacket was, laid down on it and rolled all around on it. She was chewing and mouthing it over and over. It took us a while to realize what she was doing. She was getting our scent onto herself, so the kits would become more comfortable with us. It was like we were being adopted into the family. She would bring the kits out and leave them with us while she went off to hunt.” 

“The fox kits are so small, smaller than a cat,” Astrid continues. “It was interesting watching when she came home with food, and how she taught them. One day they would have to go hunting on their own.” Dave and Astrid produced some adorable photographs of the kits as they observed them growing up. 

“Driving on a back road we came across a great grey owl lying in the roadway that appeared to have been hit by a car,” Dave recounts. Jumping out of his car, “I thought it was dead, but when I bent down to pick it up, it came to life and half flew to the edge of the road, dragging its wing behind it. I caught up to it, and took it to a grove of cedar trees off to the side where we felt the owl would be safe. We didn’t know what to do. The nearest owl rehabilitation facility was hours away, and it would probably not have survived the trauma of getting there, so we thought it was better to leave the owl there in a calm protected area and let nature take its course. When we came back the next day the owl wasn’t there. We figured that it had survived because there was no pile of feathers on the ground. We looked around for it and found it hunting a couple of miles up the road in a little apple orchard, where it could hunt mice. I spent the next two months with this beautiful creature. Great grey owls live up in the boreal forest and just come down here in the winter. Many of them have never seen a human before so they are not afraid of us. This one was like that. It would come in and land just a few feet from me. That was something special.”

One late winter day Dave was photographing a bald eagle’s nest, while the mother sat on her eggs. They were not long before hatching when a late winter storm blew in. “The winds were ferocious. I heard this big crack in the nest tree. A few more gusts and the whole tree and the huge nest crashed to the ground. The female eagle managed to safely get away from the nest and survive. For the next 5 or 6 hours she and her partner flew around the nest, screaming and crying. They held their heads up to the sky and screamed and screamed. They had just lost their nest and their family. It was heart breaking to watch. If you think that animals don’t have emotions, they do. They behave just like humans would if they lost their home and family.”

“It’s all a great learning experience,” Dave explains. “We do not travel to far flung places. We usually are within an hour of our front door. We spend a lot of time watching animals. They are all around us and if you quietly blend yourself into their world and pay close attention you can experience some amazing sights. It’s not something we are going to be able to do forever.” 

Astrid adds, “We wish we could have started wildlife photography much earlier in our lives. There have been so many magical moments.” Residents of the Kawarthas are fortunate that Dave and Astrid have devoted so much of their time to capturing these incredible sights, and have the generosity to share their experiences. 

To see more of Dave’s photography, check out:https://www.flickr.com/photos/ourlocalwildlife/

https://maryboro.ca/virtual/dave-ellis-kawarthas/

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This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.

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