From my hiding place, the piercing squawk of a Steller's jay announced that something was wrong.

Earlier that morning, on the edge of a meadow, I'd seen a newborn fawn, 4 or 5 pounds, maybe one or two hours old, staggering to take its first steps. Momma was alongside.

I'd returned to the area in a national forest, now with my camera and a 200mm zoom lens, and a video camera, hoping to get the classic shot of new life in the wild.

In the past month, field scouts and contributing photographers David Cruz, Eric Dugan and Brian Murphy have given me some tips on how to get the best wildlife shots. It's like fishing and poker, I've learned, in that you have to put yourself in the best position possible for the chance of something great happening.

Great photos, I've been taught, are often the result of a little detective work, stakeouts and then a little luck.

The first ethic of wildlife photography is that your behavior should not affect the behavior of wildlife in any way. You must be invisible.

At the Farallon Islands, when we video and photograph humpback whales, for instance, we turn the boat off and drift, and the whales will come right up to us. Same with sea otters at the mouth of Elkhorn Slough at Moss Landing, where, in a kayak, you can drift and they will swim right up to you. One otter, on its own, once decided to sit on the front of my kayak.

To be invisible, of course, means to be stationed so no bird, animal or fish knows you are there. But then there are those Steller's jays.

Tracking wildlife

Jays are the sentinels of the forest. With their squawks, they alert other birds and wildlife that there is an intruder in the area. At the Wolf School for kids, instructors try to teach youngsters how to enter a forest so the jays do not squawk out their warnings.

When you enroll in the University of Nature, this can be the best final exam. Can you walk in a way that jays do not squawk out your arrival?

Another skill that helps is the ability to track deer in the wilderness and determine their sex, size and age, and where they are likely to be - without ever seeing them.

After seeing the doe and its newborn fawn, I needed those skills to get myself in the best position for a photo without them knowing I was there.

It didn't take long to find inverted cone-like shapes in the dirt. These are from the nose of a deer when it eats truffles, the mushroom-like fungi that grow just beneath the surface. The size of the depression in the dirt reveals the size of the nose that made it, and from that, you can figure the size of deer to which that nose is connected. A depression 1 inch deep and 2 inches across is a big deer.

If you then find two pencil-tip-size impressions on each side of the inverted cone in the dirt, well, those are from the tips of antlers. By measuring the distance between those two pencil-tip dots, you can calculate how big the antlers are, as well as the buck that made them.

You then search the vicinity for matted-down grass in meadows. That is where the deer bed down for the night. Finally, you must identify the nearest water.

You then connect the dots between those three areas. That creates a picture, the pattern for the deer's daily travel tendencies - that is, where they eat, drink and sleep.

You then can hide yourself between these routes and have a chance to intercept them, and get your photographs without deer and other wildlife knowing you were there.

Hidden surprise

This past week, these were my strategies to get a photograph of that micro-sized fawn, staggering in its first steps.

I was well hidden, secreted away behind a bush, sitting perfectly quiet, invisible. About 50 feet ahead, about 20 feet high in a pine, a Steller's jay started squawking a warning that an intruder was in the area. Something was wrong.

Had I been found out? Through the zoom lens, I bored in. The jay was not looking at me, it appeared, but well off to my right. I turned in time to spot movement in a bush. A moment later, a fox emerged. It walked into the open, quiet and sure of itself, and then hopped onto a large boulder.

My only giveaway was the click of the shutter. After the first shot, the fox turned to stare straight at my location, but did not appear to see me. I focused and pressed the button a second time.

A moment later, the fox scampered away as quickly as it arrived.

In what appeared a wildlife anomaly, the coloring of the fox made it look as if it were a hybrid mix of gray fox and red fox; gray fur with red highlights. Actually, it was a gray fox.

Later, the momma and fawn did return, 75 yards off. They didn't approach within range for the close-up photograph I had envisioned, the wonder of new life.

Instead, with the surprise of the fox, I was able to capture a rare moment in the wild.

The best outdoor experiences are often like this: You set out on an adventure, and while out there, something else happens that opens the natural world to you.

No matter your age, outdoor orientation or passions, these moments are among the greatest the outdoors has to offer.
