The Fishers of Oaks Bottom — Part Three: Three Fishers, One Morning

Three fishers on one morning at Oaks Bottom, and not one of them was doing it the way the book says.

The kingfisher and the turtle

In Part One I wrote that you usually get one glimpse of a Belted Kingfisher and a rattling complaint as she bolts. In Part Two she stayed. This time she stayed, and fished, and had an audience.

One log, two animals, entirely indifferent to one another. She is a female — the rust band across the belly is the giveaway, and Belted Kingfishers are one of the few birds where the female is the showier sex.

The turtle is a Red-eared Slider, and it is not supposed to be here. They were sold as pets by the million, outgrew the tank, and got carried down to whatever pond was nearest. They now hold half the sunny logs in Portland against the native Western Painted Turtle, which wants exactly the same thing — a good log, in the sun, with a short drop into deep water.

You tell them apart at the head. A slider wears a red mark behind the eye. A painted turtle has clean yellow stripes and no red on the head at all; it carries its orange on the rim of the shell and underneath instead.

I got this one wrong at first and called it a painted turtle, which is the answer I wanted. I should have known better. Oaks Bottom carries a lot of things that were brought here — nutria, snails, turtles, a good share of the plants you walk past on the trail — and when a sighting is a toss-up between the native and the introduced, the introduced one is the safer bet. That is not pessimism. It is a former landfill in the middle of a city, on a river, next door to an amusement park, and that history is still in the place.

It was the last frame of the morning that settled it. She tossed a fish, the turtle lifted its head, and there was the red stripe in full sun, about as plain as it gets.

She hunts by hovering over the water and then going in headfirst, from height, with nothing like the waterproofing a duck has. This is what that actually looks like.

When she came back to the log her wings were still open, and from behind you can see what is normally invisible — the white spotting across the primaries and the fine barring down the flight feathers, a pattern you only ever get a look at in the half-second before she folds it away.

Afterwards: hunched over, head down, shaking the river out of herself. A kingfisher has to do this properly, because unlike a duck she is not waterproofed for the work. She goes in hard and then has to put herself back together on a branch.

The turtle, two feet away, watched the entire performance and continued not to care.

Which was too good to leave alone, so the turtle has been promoted to judge. That one lives over on Nature Can be Funny with the rest of them.

And then she threw her breakfast in the air.

That is not high spirits. A fish has to go down head first — swallowed the other way, the fins and the gill covers stand up and lock in the throat, and a bird can choke on a fish well under its own size. She comes up from a dive holding it crosswise, beats it against the branch until it stops arguing, and then tosses it, lets it turn in the air, and catches it pointed the right way. If she misses, she does it again.

Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets do the same thing. I have stood and watched both of them juggle a fish in the shallows until it lined up. Different birds, different methods, same last problem.

And the turtle, if you look, has its head up for once.

The egret

About ten feet above the water and already committed. The body flattens, the neck comes out straight instead of folded, and everything in the bird points at one spot below.

This is not how most people see an egret hunt. Usually they wade — standing still in the shallows, striking down from where they stand. But when the water is too deep to stand in, herons and egrets will take a perch above it and drop onto what they want. I have watched Great Blue Herons do the same thing here. It is in the family, and it is seldom seen.

I did not get the dive itself. The kingfisher gave me hers; this one did not. By the time the camera was moving she was already in the water, and what I have is the half-second afterwards — slowed down, because at full speed there is nothing to see but a splash and a bird that is suddenly somewhere else.

Four years of going back to the same water and I still miss most of what happens in it. That is not false modesty — it is the job. You are not quick enough, and then one morning you are.

Wings up, head tucked underneath, looking straight down into the shade it has just made.

I was standing on the trail for this one, and it simply allowed me to be there — which is most of this work. You do not approach a bird. You arrive, you stay still, and eventually you stop being a problem.

The pelican

One American White Pelican, on his own in the shallows.

I spend a fair amount of time correcting people about this bird, and I do not mind it. At any distance he is a big white shape on the water, and a big white shape on the water around here is usually a Great Egret. People see white, and reasonably enough they say egret.

The difference is the bill and the size, and the size does not help you from far away because there is nothing out there to measure him against. So use the bill. An egret carries a slim yellow dagger on a long S-curved neck. A pelican has that enormous orange shovel with a pouch slung underneath it, on a short thick neck — nothing else on this water looks remotely like it. And the moment he opens his wings it is settled: a pelican’s flight feathers are black, and an egret has no black on it anywhere.

Last time I was out here there was a pair of Tundra Swans doing their mating dance, and I joked to a friend that it must be their honeymoon. Then this fellow turned up alone, and I thought — perhaps his honeymoon was shorter.

Which turns out to be close to the truth. Tundra Swans mate for life; the pair I photograph here are the same two birds, year after year. American White Pelicans pair for a single season and then go their separate ways. The honeymoon really is short.

He is also the wrong bird to be alone. Pelicans do not dive for fish — they herd them, several birds working together, driving a shoal into the shallows and scooping in unison. A pelican by himself is a bird without his crew. They are rare here anyway; they pass through in spring and autumn and then they are gone.

Three fishers, none of them by the book

An egret hunting from a branch instead of wading. A pelican fishing alone when his whole method depends on company. And a kingfisher who used to bolt the moment she saw me, now diving in front of an audience and drying off at her leisure.

Field guides tell you what a bird usually does. The refuge, if you keep going back to it, tells you what they actually do.