Four ounces of falcon. Two foveae in each eye, ultraviolet vision, and a habit of landing on twigs that move. Seven photographs of Oregon’s smallest raptor, and how to tell one from everything else.
The bird that fishes the Willamette by falling out of the sky feet-first — the hover, the dive, the miss, and the climb back out. Photographed from the Sellwood Bridge.
Two completely different birds share the name hawk. Learn to tell a buteo from an accipiter and the whole city reorganizes itself. Red-tailed, red-shouldered and Cooper’s hawks, photographed in Oregon.
There are owls in Oaks Bottom. Most people who walk the loop never see one, and that is not bad luck — it is the entire design. An owl’s daytime job is to be invisible, and they are extremely good at it. Everything below was photographed a few miles from downtown Portland, mostly by standing …
Three of them share the same water here, and most people only ever notice one. The great blue heron is unmissable — four feet of gray patience standing in the shallows, Portland’s official city bird since 1986. The great white egret is the bright one, the shape that stops traffic on the Sellwood Bridge. And …
There are two places I photograph bald eagles. One is a floodplain refuge inside the city of Portland, ten minutes from my house. The other is a beach on the Oregon coast where I have been going for a good part of my life. The birds are the same species. The lives they lead are …
Neskowin is a tiny village on the Oregon coast that has quietly turned itself into a bird sanctuary. The locals plant with intention — gardens full of flowers chosen to feed the travelers — and the birds have noticed. Songbirds fill the hedges, and the hummingbirds come in numbers: the year-round Anna’s, and in season, …
Of all the birds that pass through Portland, none looks less real than the cedar waxwing. Its plumage is so sleek it seems airbrushed on. A fawn crest, a black mask, and a tail tipped in bright yellow appear. Those tiny red droplets on the wings look like beads of sealing wax and give the …
Some days Oaks Bottom hands you everything at once. Today was one of those — a flawless 75 degrees, the kind of blue overhead that makes you slow right down, and the whole refuge humming with life. And not just the birds. People, too. But let me start where I always seem to end up: …
You would think a four-foot bird would be impossible to miss. You would be wrong. This Great Blue Heron was standing more or less in the open, and I nearly walked right past it — that blue-gray plumage melting into the reeds and water and shadow until the bird all but disappeared. Stillness, it turns …
Some birds you chase for the drama. This one I chased for the light. The Lesser Goldfinch is the smallest finch in North America — a tiny bird, hardly bigger than the flowers it feeds on — and on the right morning, in the right light, it turns into a little piece of stained glass. …
After a week of kingfishers and herons down at the water, Sellwood Park handed me something with a very different job description. A predator. I had an encounter with a Cooper’s Hawk — and if the fishers of Oaks Bottom hunt by patience, this bird hunts by ambush and pure speed. The Cooper’s Hawk is …
Oaks Bottom is a pond full of fishers — but a few of them are masters, and they couldn’t go about it more differently. One is all explosive speed; another, all patience. Same water, same quarry, opposite philosophies. One morning, I got to watch them work. These are not easy birds to be near — …
Some mornings the garden fills up with small, fast birds working the feeder. None of them hold still for long — which is half the fun of trying to photograph them. Here are four little visitors from one morning, and the moments they gave me. A Juvenile American Bushtit One of the smallest songbirds in …
Spring is the season of new life. You can see it everywhere, if you slow down — in the hardhack (Spiraea douglasii) bursting open along the water, pink and soft against the green. And you can see it in the smallest creatures, twice over — because spring is also the time of waiting: of young …
Some mornings the backyard becomes the story. This week a red-breasted nuthatch family has been visiting the feeder — mother and babies, working the suet, calling back and forth from the trees. The babies still have that slightly disheveled fledgling look that nuthatches grow out of within a few weeks. Red-breasted nuthatches are smaller than …
I wanted to share about the conditions on this shoot — the lighting was incredible. Around 5pm the sun hit the hummingbird perfectly, lighting up his rose-pink throat while the Willamette River and the bank behind him created this dreamy blue and green gradient backdrop. He literally glowed. I was able to get within about …
Wood Ducks are one of the most stunning waterfowl in North America — the males practically glow with iridescent greens, purples, and chestnut browns. When one stretches its wings, all of that color comes out at once. Wings Spread — The Shot That Went Viral Caught this male Wood Duck mid-wing-flap during one of his …
Perfect evening light at Oaks Bottom tonight. Seventy degrees, golden hour around 6pm, and the wildlife was out in force. The trails were full of people enjoying the spring weather, and the birds didn’t seem to mind the company. Bald Eagles — Juvenile and Adult Both juvenile and adult Bald Eagles were perched in perfect …
Spring has arrived in Portland, and my backyard fig tree has become a stage for some of the Pacific Northwest’s most beautiful small birds. A suet feeder in the garden has brought in an incredible variety of visitors. These tiny acrobats are among the most challenging birds to photograph — constantly in motion, never still, …