ELBA -- In the next few years, you'll be able to sit in your recliner, sip a cup of coffee, and enjoy crisp, startling images of bald eagles raising their young, mosquitoes feeding on the blood of a frog and wildflowers in the heart of the Whitewater Valley. Savor them, enjoy the work of Lisa Loucks Christenson of Rochester. But know that she went through more than a year of mud and mosquitoes, cold and fog, snow and heat to get them. You should also know that she loved it, enjoyed the daily trip to the valley in snowstorm and fog, relished slithering through muck to sneak up on a frog, and waiting for hours to get a shot of an eagle. She has fallen in love with the area around the former town of Beaver in the heart of the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area, the largest block of public land in southern Minnesota. To get the images, she has gone to the same two marshes near Beaver for more than a year. It's a form of time-lapse photography, only she shoots the same tree (and on the same trip, the same cornfield and barn) and other details daily, along with anything else that catches her eye. In the past two years, Christenson has also followed two eagles as they raise their young. To do all of it has required several digital cameras and a lot of clothing. Last week, she wore faded camouflage pants and shirt, and her hair was wrapped in a red bandana. It's not fashionable, but when you're slopping through a marsh and plowing through nettles taller than you are, fashion fades, and reality rules. She gladly wears that gear in summer, and dresses for minus-30 ("I literally felt like a walking marshmallow") in winter to get pictures for two books on eagles and a third book on a year in the life of two marshes. The one eagle book is due out in October, while the marsh book is due in April 2007, she said. The second eagle book will come out later. . . . --Post-Bulletin / June 12, 2006 / Credit: John Weiss Post-Bulletin Outdoor Writer
By Meghan Sparks Life in the nest Posted: May 19, 2008 10:35 PM Life in the nest Whitewater Valley, MN (KTTC-TV) -- It's another day on Lisa Christenson's journey. A journey she captures through the lens of her camera. Nature photographer Lisa Christenson started down this path four years ago. She was studying the sandhill cranes in the Whitewater Valley, but the small white heads of the bald eagle caught her attention. Lisa Christenson says, "I heard that faint cry of an eaglet ...
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