I spent a week in Maine at the end of September. I camped near Baxter State Park (map), just like two years ago and visited the park every day. My main goal was to photograph moose and other wildlife as well as the beautiful fall colors of Maine. On the first morning while driving to the park I found two moose (Alces alces) on a small meadow, a young bull and a cow. I didn’t even reach the gate, so I felt really lucky. I grabbed my camera with the big lens, put the gear on my monopod and started photographing the bull. He was so close, I couldn’t fit the whole animal in my frame, so I took some close portraits before moving back to the other side of the road to be far enough to fit the huge moose in my frame. After a while he tried to mate with the cow but she had different ideas. Probably thought he is too young to be the father of her calf.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any more moose during my trip, but I’m still happy with the images and the experience I had. I drove a lot around the park (lots of dirt roads) to find any more wildlife or landscapes to photograph. The most beautiful part of the park is probably the Sandy Stream Pond where you can see Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine: 5,269 feet (1,606 m). I hiked to this place every morning and it was beautiful as the leaves started turning red, orange and yellow. I also photographed some birds here.

I made a mistake to book my camp outside the park so I couldn’t be at Sandy Pond at sunrise, since the park gate only opens at 6 am. However, I witnessed a very interesting squirrel behavior around my campsite which was the highlight of my whole trip, so I didn’t mind missing the sunrises. There were lots of American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) in the campground and one afternoon I noticed one of them as running in the woods behind my campsite, grabbing some food then running away. He repeated this in every few minutes so I took a closer look hoping to take some photos of this little critter. I saw that he collected some kind of samara fruits (also called helicopter seeds) that weren’t broken apart. I found some of these clusters on the ground and pointed my camera on them and waited for the squirrel to arrive. I took some photos, but they were not great because the fruits were in the “wrong” places with not so pleasant foreground and background and usually in the darkest places on the forest ground. I wanted to do something about this, but all the fruits were gone. This little fella worked very quickly. I almost gave up when I noticed that new fruits were falling from the sky. When I looked up I saw the squirrel up in the tree dropping the fruits so he could collect them later. Now I understood why the fruits were together and kinda raw. I quickly collected a few fruits while the squirrel was up high and placed them on better places with a little more light. I still had to use ISO 3200 and sometimes even 6400 in the dark forest, but I finally was able to take some images of this little creature that I was happy with.

My time in Maine was great. The nights were cold, but fortunately it didn’t rain so camping there was fine. I had some great wildlife encounters including moose, squirrels and birds and the autumn landscape was beautiful too. I created a small gallery below with additional images from my Maine trip. The gear I used: Canon EOS 5Ds and 5DsR cameras, Canon 17-40mm f/4, Canon 70-200mm f/4 and Canon 500mm f/4 lenses, Gitzo 1340 tripod, RRS BH-55 ballhead, Induro 505XL monopod, Induro TH4 tilthead.