About
Bird Story Photography
By Kathleen Bailey · A field journal · Olympia, WA
I am a bird photographer based in Olympia, Washington. My mornings are often spent in the refuges, estuaries, and old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest — Nisqually NWR and smaller refuges such as McLane Creek and Black Lake Meadows — waiting to meet the light and the birds.
This site is my field journal. Most weeks I’ll add a new entry: a single species, a few photographs, and a little of the bird’s natural history — where they migrate from, what they eat, how they sound. I am drawn to the story of a bird as much as I am to getting a good photo.
My favorite way to take bird photographs is to be alone with the birds, to be in their world. It's the feeling of sharing their world that I really enjoy. That's what I loved when I first started photographing birds in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area. I would check tide tables in the morning, then go to the places where I would most likely see the birds I most wanted to photograph. I was often alone or with a few other people. Being in the birds’ world was a healing, peaceful experience and that's what I'd like to share with others.
After three years of birding classes with Nanci Adams my family moved to the Pacific Northwest. I joined the Salish Sea Pigeon Guillemot Network as a volunteer and I monitor a Guillemot nesting burrow near my home during summer. I post my work on Pacific Northwest Birding Facebook group. and everything here is done on the bird’s terms. I follow the Audubon Guide to Ethical Bird Photography.
The promise
Dedication
This website, Bird Story Photography is dedicated to my birding teacher Nanci Adams, who lives and teaches birding classes in Watsonville, CA. I first met Nanci in 2021 when I enrolled in her Wednesday morning Birding Basics class through Watsonville Adult School. Along with many other students I continued to take the same class for several years. We spent time out in the field each session, visiting local birding sites and always learning something new because we never knew which birds we were going to see.
The classes were life changing for me. I came into the class as an aspiring bird photographer who knew very little about birds. At the time I would have identified a Great Egret as an Ibis, which I pronounced with a short i as /i/bis.
Learning about the birds we saw on our class trips was enjoyable and effortless because Nanci had a wealth of lifetime birding knowledge and was skilled at sharing it with us. She is a natural teacher. My learning was helped by photographing the birds we saw, and coming home and labeling them. The knowledge that I gained by repeatedly seeing local and migrating birds with Nanci over several years time gave me what feels like a treasure trove of birding experience and information.
The name of this site, Bird Story Photography, can also be attributed to Nanci. When I told her early on that I loved to photograph birds, she told me to try and tell the bird’s story in addition to taking their photograph. Telling something of the birds’ stories along with posting photos of them is my goal for this website.