Letters Home a visual diary of Matthew Ginn's activities in Portland, Oregon, and beyond971-219-7189
info@matthewginn.com
Posts Tagged ‘birds’
More spring birds, and other friends
I brought my camera for another walk around Lower Shaker Lake yesterday morning. Bird-wise, the most exciting thing I saw was a probable golden-winged warbler (I didn’t see it well enough to identify it, but that’s what someone else said it was). Apparently they’re not unheard of, but quite rare around here. Sadly, it was [...]
More birds
I have several new magazine shoots to tell about here, but I’m waiting for them to be published. Until then, here are some more birds, photographed yesterday morning around Lower Shaker Lake, a short walk from our house. It was the perfect opportunity, where good weather meets my availability, combined with lack of leaves on [...]
Spring has sprung …
Although there was snow in the air again this morning, last Friday it felt like spring had finally arrived. It was sunny, and relatively warm around 10°C (50°F), so I decided to bust out of the office and enjoy the afternoon. Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve (aka Dike 14) is not too far from my home, [...]
Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge
The miracle of a four-day weekend (even if you work most of the day on Friday) is that you have time to do everything you normally do on the weekend, get caught up on some backlog of things you’ve been meaning to do, and still have time to go for a walk. So Sunday Perrie [...]
Recent hikes
I’ve been a bad blogger lately … I’ve been busy, though, with travels and shooting a bunch of exciting things that I can’t share with you yet. But here are some photos I can share, from a pair of hikes Perrie and I took recently. The first, a month ago today, was at the Wapato [...]
Naturalists
As much as I enjoy exploring the world on my own, it’s even better when you’re in the company of an expert: a geologist or a local historian, for example, because they can point out and explain so many things that you’d never see. A few weeks ago I got to walk through Smith & [...]
Up close with nature
Perrie and I took advantage of a nice afternoon a couple weeks ago to take a walk through Smith & Bybee Wetlands Natural Area, just a couple miles from our house in North Portland. As always, there was plenty of wildlife to enjoy. (Some of it was not alive. Interesting note: opossums typically have a [...]
Photographing a photographer
A few weeks ago I was put in the unusual position of photographing a photographer. I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that before, and I have to admit that when I arrived at the assignment I was feeling a bit self-conscious. However, my subject turned out to be a totally down-to-earth, cool guy and besides, does [...]
Road Trip 2011: Day 3
Our focal point for Day 3 of the trip was to visit the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge, established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds, is based around Harney and Malheur lakes. This pair of large, swampy lakes in the otherwise dry desert of southeastern [...]
Floating through life on a houseboat
As a city built at the confluence of two major rivers (which don’t freeze), Portland includes several communities of floating homes. They don’t have motors or steering systems, so they aren’t really “houseboats,” but that’s what most people call them anyway. They’re much closer together than most land homes and move up and down with [...]
Important bird area
From a walk last weekend in the Carty Unit of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Perrie and I also visited the Carty Unit in 2009.
Lorikeets
Of all the exhibits we saw at the Oregon Zoo last weekend (like this and this), my favourite was probably the African bats, which were surprisingly active (in all kinds of behaviour) and close enough to see easily. The most unexpected and fun, though, was definitely “Lorikeet Landing” in the Pacific Shores section of the [...]
Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge—’S’ Unit
About a 18 months ago, Perrie and I visited the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge for the first time. Located on the Columbia River, the refuge preserves about 5,300 acres of marsh, grasslands and woodlands as natural habitat for birds, fish, and other wildlife, and is largely off-limits to the public. Our first visit was to [...]
Cape Perpetua: view from the top
This set of images deals with some of the hikes Perrie and I did at Cape Perpetua last weekend. Neither was particularly long, although the St. Perpetua trail was pretty challenging thanks to the 750-foot gain in elevation over slightly more than a mile. Yes, that’s an average of about 13%. Some of it was [...]
Brown pelicans
I’m slowly going through the hundreds of photos I took on this weekend’s camping vacation adventure on the Oregon coast, trying to figure out the best way to present them. It was a great trip, filled with cool wildlife, natural wonders and spectacular vistas. Well, maybe not spectacular vistas per se, but … memorable? I’ve [...]
Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge
On Sunday afternoon, Perrie and I braved the rain to check out Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, in Washington about 25 miles north of downtown Portland. We were fortunate that it stayed basically dry for our whole visit, even verging on sunshine at one point, although we did get caught in a brief downpour on the [...]
A bird on a wire?
Last week, while I was sitting at my desk and talking to my parents on the phone, a large hawk landed on the telephone pole about 150 feet away from my window. At first I thought it was a red-tail, or maybe an osprey, both of which are pretty common around here. But I knew [...]