Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge is a 170 acre floodplain wetland on the east bank of the Willamette River in PDX, just north of the Sellwood Bridge. The Refuge is home to a wide variety of birds, including water and shore birds, woodlands birds, and on occasion, birds of prey. Today, the only residents that seemed to be at home were a small band of ducks – a group of Mallards and a pair of American Wigeons.
A day without rain this time of year in PDX is like a dog that speaks: very rare. A sunny day this time of year in PDX is like a dog that speaks Norwegian: even rarer!*
Of course a visit to The Bottom is rewarding any time of year, but on this visit we were on a mission: to put the new Nikon D3s and the 600mm NIKKOR f/4 lens on test. The D3s is the newly released version of the D3, while the AF-S NIKKOR 600mm f/4D ED-IF II is the predecessor of the current VR-enabled 600mm telephoto lens. The 600mm was rented from Pro Photo Supply, an excellent full-service camera shop.
There are several access points around the refuge. The best of these, at least on this day, was from the trail that exits the north corner of Sellwood Park, and runs along the main lake underneath Sellwood Blvd. These Mallards seemed to be virtually unaffected by my presence, although they did notice when I cracked up the frame rate.
Swimming around amongst the Mallards was a pair of American Widgeons, one of which is shown below. They sailed around a bit and then disappeared into the reeds.
The images in this entry were recorded on December 24, 2009, between about 11:00 and 13:00 PDT, using the Nikon D3s and the AF-S 600mm f/4 fitted with the AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E II (840mm FX). The teleconverter adds a full stop to the f/4, bringing it to f/5.6, but retains full autofocus. The shots were made at either f/5.6 or f/8, ISO at 200. Minimal processing – no cropping applied. The D3s is magic, a clear improvement over the already extremely impressive D700/D3 image engine. The 600mm lens is just awesome. The current VR version is currently unavailable – as soon as it is – Get in the shopping cart!
*Those of you of a certain age will recognize that the speaking dog bit is adapted from Black Adder III, episode 2.
A map of the Oaks Bottom area appears below courtesy of Google Earth:
