Andrew Budziak Wildlife

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Andrew Budziak Wildlife

A home on Facebook for my wildlife photography and other projects.

02/18/2026

The ice was friendly today. The fog? Not so much. Peter and I stayed safe a dry-ish so it was a good day over all.

02/05/2026

Sending out this little field report. We’re about mid way through. Things have been incredible. Here’s what our work looks like. Lots more photos and video to come.

Thanks for the amazing under ice stills.

01/20/2026

This is crazy. I have been included in this year’s Explorers Club 50 class, which is the “Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About.” This is in recognition of the citizen science ice diving initiative that started 4 years ago. By the very nature of this project, it’s not a solo endeavour. The whole thing got started with a chat with . We thought it would be interesting to see if we could get divers to collect fresh water algae samples from the ice bottom. This was an insane idea. It was hard, dangerous and had never been done. It turns out the best way to do something crazy hard is to find the best people. Which we did. The list of divers, engineers, filmmakers, scientists and citizen scientists that have volunteered to help on this project is incredible. In future posts I will be focusing on these team members, but the earliest days were made possible by Dale McKnight, Richard Notter, and (who’s in this photo). was a fantastic sounding board and I’m very excited she’ll be joining us this year.

We’ll be continuing this work in Lake Simcoe in the coming weeks. I’ll be sure to share pics and videos from that adventure as it happens.

A huge thank you to the organizations that made this all possible:

The Consecon Foundation

The Martineau Foundation

11/23/2025

I’ve been learning how to see with new eyes. This isn’t some kind of poetic diatribe about seeing the world through the eyes of a child. My eyes have been crap since I was a teenager. I’ve survived with glasses and contacts for most of my life and that’s often been a struggle with diving and photography. I’m not a good candidate for laser. I had just accepted that vision would always be a struggle and I mentioned as much to my buddy Dr. ._.2020 . He recommended Ortho-Ks, which I hadn’t heard of previously. Basically these are hard contacts you wear over night. They mold your eyes so you don’t need to wear anything in the day to support your vision. I’ve been using these for a few months now. While there are some down sides (worse night vision and a slight overall decrease in sharpness), I’ve really enjoyed the results.

Because of this change I’ve had to relearn how to shoot both photo and video. Looking at a screen a few inches from my face or using the viewfinder has become a different experience. I don’t entirely trust what I’m seeing yet, and it’s taking me sometime to sort this all out. An example of this is when I saw a Copper’s hawk land in a tree not too far from me. It was backlit and so I was working off a silhouette.

I could not figure out why its tail feathers were on backwards. “Is this an injury? An abnormality?”

Once I looked through my viewfinder, I quickly realized the bird had cranked its neck 180 degrees to take a lazy look at the photographer with the poor vision.

I guarantee you without a long lens, that bird could have counted my eyebrows.

How great it would be to have the eyes of a hawk.

11/20/2025

I’ve been on the road a lot and just generally busy with life, so I haven’t been able to shoot much for myself. When plans fell through yesterday, I took the opportunity to go out and visit a few of my favourite spots. I didn’t have much of a plan, and just wanted to get out there. I came across this heron along a beautiful little river. The water was calm and the last light of the day made all the colour seem soft.

10/28/2025

An amazing first day with the team and . Loads of awesome footage and fish behaviour.

fellows get things done.

10/14/2025

It’s still crazy warm out, but that doesn’t mean we can’t practice for winter diving. and I got together for a nice little team building dive over the weekend in Brockville in preparation for an upcoming expedition. Jill had her camera and took some fun photos while we were splashing about.

📸

09/12/2025

Pressing EXPORT on a rough cut of a project that was four years in the making is a wild feeling. An idea that started as “ice diving?” scribbled in a note book has taken me into some of the most hostile and incredible conditions imaginable. This film was hard to make, but it feels very good to be this close to the finish line. I’m not sure when it will see the light of day, but I can’t wait to share it with you.

The Consecon Foundation really rolled the dice supporting the earliest phase of this project, and I like to think their gamble paid off. Shortly after that first expedition the and the Martineau Foundation all came on board and allowed this crazy project to unfold.

and have been there since day one and I’m terrified for them to see this edit.

If you’re interested in seeing this doc, believe me - I will let you know the second it’s out there.

09/09/2025

I am amazed at this family of coyotes I’ve been photographing recently. They live in such close proximity to a school, houses, transit, roads and pretty busy sidewalks. There have been zero reported incidents (that I know of). I haven’t seen any evidence of hand feeding or people leaving out food. Despite the amount of dog walking in the area, I haven’t heard of a single problem with other pus. This is coexistence at its finest.

08/29/2025

Mother is tired.

I’m pretty sure coyote weaning is done by this time of the year, but that doesn’t mean mamma isn’t tired. I watched this mom chill out under a bush. She took a look at me, decided I wasn’t going to cause any trouble, so she alternated between little naps in the morning light and walking around enjoying the cool air. Her pups are old enough to be out doing things on their own, so I’m sure she’s loving the equivalent of coyote back-to-school.

08/27/2025

Mamma’s always listening.

There’s an amazing family of coyotes living not far from my house. One afternoon I counted 6 (!) poking their heads up from behind a ridge. I stayed away when the pups were young, but now I’m comfortable taking photos from a distance. This morning I spent a little bit of time with mom and I think dad. This is the female. Her ears are incredible. I’m always able to spot her from a great distance. Pretty hard to miss with those satellites.

07/07/2025

BEAVER LOVE

I’m not sure you’re ready for this. This is a big episode full of wildlife, beautiful weather and legends. Thankfully two of Saskatoon’s favourite sons were on hand to help. acted as cultural ambassador. And did what Mike does best: found the beaver.

You’re gonna love this one.

This Thursday, 5pm over on my YouTube channel.

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Toronto, ON

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http://www.AndrewBudziak.com/

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