If hearing the word “Churchill” conjures up images of white bears on white ice in your mind’s eye, you are not alone. Churchill, Manitoba, is one of the most celebrated polar bear destinations on Earth.

But there is another Churchill.

It doesn’t have a marketing campaign. It isn’t showing up on the glossy brochures. While the rest of the world is only thinking about Churchill for a couple of months out of the year, a small and dedicated community of bird photographers has quietly discovered that this sub-arctic landscape is one of the most extraordinary bird photography destinations on the continent.

This is not a destination that rewards you only because you got lucky. Churchill rewards you because the sub-arctic, in early June, is absolutely electric with life. And this workshop is built for bird photographers who want more than just a checklist. It's for photographers who want to understand the landscape that produces these birds, who want to make images that tell a story, and who want to leave with skills they didn't arrive with.

Consider this workshop your invitation to be among the first to discover, photograph and share what this special place holds.

The birds

Let me be honest with you: the bird list here could fill the rest of this page and still feel incomplete. I’m personally closing in on nearly 1,000 species on my life list and I still celebrated five life birds in just a few days, not to mention over 30 “firsts” of the year on top of everything else that made the list.

Nesting parasitic jaegers course over the tundra with the menace and grace of something designed specifically to be photographed in flight. I’ve never before experienced a jaeger ballet so close it was too tight to fit in my frame! Hudsonian godwits and Hudsonian whimbrel probe the wet sedge meadows, two of the most range-restricted breeding shorebirds on the continent using Churchill as a critical stop. Short-billed dowitchers work the shallows in tight, coordinated groups.

Long-tailed ducks, one of the most striking waterfowl in North America, are pairing up, the males begging for lens time as they preen their breeding plumage and show off their namesake tail. Pacific loons float on the tundra ponds with a stillness that belies how difficult they are to approach and how exquisite they look in good light. Spruce grouse and willow ptarmigan materialize from the forest edge like feathered ghosts, often allowing remarkably close approach in a way that will surprise you.

But if there is one bird that stops even the most experienced naturalist in their tracks, it is the Arctic tern. What you are looking at, when an Arctic tern wheels overhead at Churchill in early June, is an animal that has just completed one of the most extraordinary journeys in the history of animal life on Earth. 44,000 miles is what each bird covers in a year, the longest migration of any animal on the planet.

They are fierce, improbable, luminous birds, and Churchill holds a significant breeding colony of them. In the long, lateral light of a June evening, a tern hanging in the wind along the Stygge Creek is the kind of subject that makes you forget every technical concern and just try to do it justice.

Beyond the highlights, expect Bonaparte's gulls, red-necked phalaropes, white-winged and surf scoters, common and red-throated loons, common eiders, semipalmated sandpipers, dunlin, American golden-plovers, and species from the boreal understory that rarely appear on photographer's target lists but absolutely should. Raptors work the tundra edges, too, merlins and short-eared owls among them.

And don't overlook the passerines. The shrubby tundra edges and boreal patches of Churchill are alive with songbirds in early June, and the diversity will surprise you. White-crowned and fox sparrows sing from the willow scrub with a clarity that carries across the open ground. Harris's sparrows, one of the last North American songbirds to have its breeding grounds discovered by science, and still a bird that stops experienced birders in their tracks, move through the understory with a quiet authority. Lincoln's sparrows work the sedge edges. Blackpoll warblers pass through in numbers, their high-frequency songs testing the upper limits of more than a few ears in our group. Orange-crowned and yellow warblers bring color to the boreal margins, and white-winged crossbills may materialize from the spruce tops at any moment, their twisted bills and improbable beauty a reminder that this forest operates on its own logic entirely. These are not consolation birds. They are part of what makes Churchill's early June list as deep as it is.

The birding here is legitimately exceptional. And the photography opportunities are even better.