How these photographs were taken
People ask how the birds are always at eye level. Two answers, and neither one is a long lens.
⭐ A kayak sits a few inches above the water — which is exactly eye level for a swimming duck, or for a sandpiper working a bank. A canoe or a motorboat puts you above them, looking down. The low seat is the whole point. Most of the river birds here were photographed from one.
⭐ For mudflats, lying flat on your stomach. Cold, wet, and you cannot reposition once you are down — but it puts you level with a six-inch bird, and it runs the background off to distant water instead of mud.
⭐ In both cases the real trick is the same, and it is not equipment: do not walk toward the bird. Arrive at its level and wait until it stops minding you. A drifting boat reads as terrain. A person lying down reads as terrain. A person walking the bank reads as a predator.
🗺️ Built for Oaks Bottom — and it travels.
These are the birds of the lower Willamette, so you will meet most of them at
Tualatin River and Ridgefield refuges, Jackson Bottom in
Hillsboro, Smith & Bybee, Sauvie Island, Forest Park and
across Portland — the species list is near identical at every one of them, and
the identification works anywhere in the metro.
⭐ What makes Oaks Bottom unusual is that it holds meadow, forest and wetland
in one small place. Elsewhere you would walk three of them to meet this many
birds. Here they are all within the same hour.
Also on the site: Bird Finder
— identify by color and size, plus the bird quizzes.