The Birds Were in the Parking Lot
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
Welcome to Jonathan's Journal
Explore my adventures capturing Pacific Northwest wildlife through photography and videography. From stunning nature photos to music videos, interactive bird quizzes, and comprehensive field guides - join me on this journey through the natural world.
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
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A Field Guide for Oaks Bottom, In Your Pocket
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
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
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
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
The Fern Garden: How We Brought Back a Patch of Dead Ground
There is a patch of ground at the end of my street that had stopped working. Not overgrown. Not messy. Dead. Bare packed clay under a stand of big leaf
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October at Oaks Bottom: What One Native Aster Was Holding Up
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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Honda CR-V Hybrid Trailer Wiring Without the Factory Tow Package
The plug-and-play harness needs a factory tow package my hybrid didn’t have. Here is the custom 4-way install instead — including the driver’s-side 5V data wire that will lock your dashboard, and where the fuse must go. … Continue readingHonda CR-V Hybrid Trailer Wiring Without the Factory Tow Package
Storm Cloud Waltz and Forest Lullaby — and the Scores Are Yours
Two original compositions set against Portland, the Oregon coast, and the animals of Oaks Bottom. Somebody said their blood pressure dropped twenty points watching one of them. Somebody else read the score while it played. If you play, both scores are yours. … Continue readingStorm Cloud Waltz and Forest Lullaby — and the Scores Are Yours
Making the Light: Flash Macro, and a Field Guide I Have Been Quietly Planning
Two afternoons in eighty-degree heat with a Godox AD200Pro and a 40-megapixel Fuji taught me that the shutter is not what freezes a bee. Here are the long-horned bees of Oaks Bottom, and the field guide all of this is building toward. … Continue readingMaking the Light: Flash Macro, and a Field Guide I Have Been Quietly Planning
My Photographs Are a Revenue Stream — For Nextdoor
Three of my posts, three advertisements I never approved, and roughly $1,200 of advertising revenue that went to the company hosting them. Then I read Nextdoor’s own documentation and found out the ads had never stopped — I had just stopped seeing them. … Continue readingMy Photographs Are a Revenue Stream — For Nextdoor
The Damselflies of Oaks Bottom
Five eyes, two sets of genitalia, wings with no pigment in them, and a childhood spent underwater as an ambush predator. Fourteen photographs from the lake shore, and how to tell one from a dragonfly. … Continue readingThe Damselflies of Oaks Bottom
Build Your Own Tiny Refuge
I live on a city lot in Portland. The whole garden would fit in a lot of people’s living rooms — and it is the most effective stress relief I have ever found. What the science actually says, what brings the wildlife in, and why small does not mean insignificant. … Continue readingBuild Your Own Tiny Refuge
The Only Wealth That Matters
I am 54, on no medication, and earlier this summer I did a thousand pushups in a day. Not to impress you — so you know this comes from practice. Why health is the only thing you actually own, and what it genuinely costs. … Continue readingThe Only Wealth That Matters
Forest Bathing: The Health Practice I Was Doing Without Knowing It
Two to three hours a day in the woods with a camera. It turns out the Japanese have a name for it and decades of research behind it — plus a few mechanisms most articles leave out. … Continue readingForest Bathing: The Health Practice I Was Doing Without Knowing It
The American Kestrel: Portland’s Smallest Falcon
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Garter Snakes of Oaks Bottom
There is a moment, when something long and quick moves through the grass beside your foot, when the body decides before the mind does. Everybody has it. I have it.
The Bees Next Door
When people picture a bee, they picture a honeybee — hive, queen, honey, the whole operation. But most of the bees actually working your garden aren’t honeybees at all. Oregon
Plant the Flowers — Hummingbirds from Neskowin to Sellwood
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
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 Boy, His Collie, and a Stampede
This is Prince — my collie, and my best friend growing up. 🐾 I’ve shared his portrait before, but I’ve never told the story that made him a legend in
Ringo Comes Home
He turned up while I was in the middle of remodeling downstairs — a lean, friendly cat with no collar, hungry and thirsty and clearly a long way from wherever
The Neighborhood Cats
Every neighborhood has its cast of regulars — and not all of them are people. Ours comes with a whole roster of cats, each one working its own territory on
Bodhi, the Nine-Lives Cat
Every block has a lucky cat. Ours is Bodhi — my neighbor’s beloved companion, and very likely the most fortunate animal for a mile in any direction. By my count