After finishing up my workshops in Jackson Hole, I decided I needed a morning of in a cattail marsh all to myself. Watching the world come alive in a freshwater marsh is good for the soul. Marsh wrens singing. White pelicans circling overhead. And yellowheaded blackbirds galore.
The great thing about a cattail marsh is that regardless of your level of commitment to the place, you can still come away with some incredible wildlife opportunities and photographs. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you need to don neoprene waders, or work from make shift floating blinds resembling muskrat huts to get the images you want. But even if you are not feeling so GI-Joe about the day and just want to take a stroll around the outer edges for a morning, you will usually not be disappointed.
More often than not, all it takes is getting comfortable and sitting still for a bit before the wildlife of these ponds adjusts and acclimates to your presence. Once the world settles in to a great ape in its midst, the avian life tends to return to normal. Give yourself a solid 20 minutes of stillness and you will find that quite often, the wildlife will find you.