The Birds Were in the Parking Lot
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I was coming back from a session at Oaks Bottom when someone asked if I was Jonathan Swanson from Nextdoor. That keeps happening now, and I still do not know
Posts about birds in the Northwest that includes pictures and descriptions. Photos are by Jonathan Swanson
Category: Birds
The Fishers of Oaks Bottom — Part Three: Three Fishers, One Morning
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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
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A Field Guide for Oaks Bottom, In Your Pocket
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Most people walk right past. A small bird drops into the willows at Oaks Bottom, flicks its tail once, and is gone. You saw it. You could even describe it
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The Hermit Thrush Sings in the Harmonic Series
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A small brown bird on the Oaks Bottom lookout deck — and one of the very few animals shown to choose its notes from the same overtone series that underlies human music. … Continue readingThe Hermit Thrush Sings in the Harmonic Series
The Fishers of Oaks Bottom — Part Two: The Kingfisher Who Stayed
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Belted Kingfishers normally leave while you are still a hundred meters out. Yesterday one let me stay — and the sequence ends with her dropping off the branch and entering the water with her eyes shut. … Continue readingThe Fishers of Oaks Bottom — Part Two: The Kingfisher Who Stayed
White Pelicans at Oaks Bottom: A First for Everyone on the Trail
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Two American White Pelicans dropped into Oaks Bottom last week — a first for me, and for everyone I met on the trail that afternoon. … Continue readingWhite Pelicans at Oaks Bottom: A First for Everyone on the Trail
October at Oaks Bottom: What One Native Aster Was Holding Up
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Go down to Oaks Bottom in October, after the summer crowds have stopped coming and the trail is mostly dog walkers, and look at what is still in flower. It
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The American Kestrel: Portland’s Smallest Falcon
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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. … Continue readingThe American Kestrel: Portland’s Smallest Falcon
The Ospreys of the Willamette
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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. … Continue readingThe Ospreys of the Willamette
The Hawks of Portland
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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. … Continue readingThe Hawks of Portland
The Owls of Oaks Bottom
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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
Herons and Egrets of the Willamette
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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
Bald Eagles of Portland and Neskowin
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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
Plant the Flowers — Hummingbirds from Neskowin to Sellwood
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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
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The Painted Cedar Waxwings: A Stunning Bird Profile
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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
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A Perfect Day at Oaks Bottom
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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,
A Great Blue Heron, Hiding in Plain Sight
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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
Lesser Goldfinch in Perfect Light
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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
An Encounter with a Cooper’s Hawk
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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
The Fishers of Oaks Bottom — Part One: The Kingfisher & the Heron
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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,
Continue readingThe Fishers of Oaks Bottom — Part One: The Kingfisher & the Heron