About The Photographer

Rick McGregor

Originally hailing from Markham, Ontario, I was a wildlife lover from an early age. But at that time, it was mostly wild animals that fascinated me. Seeing both black bears at the dump and white-tailed deer along the roads in Algonquin Provincial Park are some of my earliest fond memories. Growing up in Markham, which was quite a small town then, there were a lot of woodlands and open fields surrounding the town which provided ample opportunities to observe smaller creatures like skunks, porcupines, groundhogs and others along with a wide variety of birds. But my interests were always just of a passing nature. And photography was not an interest of any kind.

That all changed in 2015 when my wife and I bought a cottage on Pinawa Bay on the Lee River system east of Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba. By that time, I was 60 years of age; a long way away from that young boy in Algonquin Park. One day during our first winter at our cottage, a red bird landed on the snow on the roof of our cottage. We thought someone’s exotic pet has escaped and we thought, “We have to catch this bird” for whoever is missing it. However, within seconds, a dozen or more of them joined the first one on the roof. We were stunned by the beauty of these birds and set about to find out what they were. My wife had a old Bird Guide book that had belonged to her mother and we looked in there to try to find something that looked like the birds we had seen. We initially misidentified them as white-winged crossbills but later properly identified them as male pine grosbeaks. Either way, we were hooked. We put up some bird feeders and soon our yard became home to a wonderful variety of birds from robins and Baltimore orioles to evening grosbeaks, purple and gold finches and a wide variety of sparrows.

From there, I bought my first camera; a Canon Powershot SX60 and my new hobby was about to change my life. Backyard viewing soon turned into driving the back roads looking for other birds and animals. Then we bought kayaks and expanded our searches to the waters of Pinawa Bay and Rice Creek looking for water birds. We got my wife a really good pair of binoculars to aid in spotting all varieties of wildlife.

Soon, our adventures started taking us to other area of Manitoba including Riding Mountain National Park, Nopiming Provincial Park, Whiteshell Provincial Park, Shoal Lakes and Whitewater Lake. And I have added a second camera, a Nikon Cool Pix P950.

Over the past couple of winters, we have vacationed in beautiful Costa Rica and have hired the services of Bird Guides on numerous occasions, allowing us to see and photograph some of the most beautiful creatures we have ever seen.

I hope you enjoy browsing the various sections of my website and seeing the absolute beauty and splendor that Mother Nature provides on a daily basis.

Thanks for your interest! Please use the Contact page to send any questions you may have.