Double-crested Cormorants are survivors. Once in steep decline due largely to the effects of DDT, the sleek diving birds have rebounded mightily since a 1972 ban on the insecticide. But instead of celebration, their success has brought conflict. Cormorants are prodigious piscivores, earning them the scorn of commercial and recreational fishers. For years they’ve been the target of government culling programs aimed at easing tensions, which run high around the Columbia River estuary. Since moving to Astoria, Oregon, in 2017, conservation photographer Morgan Heim has been engrossed by the cormorant conundrum. She aims to both document the birds’ complicated relationship with humans and capture their beauty and intelligence. “I want people to be challenged,” Heim says. “How can we wonder at them and have empathy for them, even if they can be inconvenient?” The Astoria-Megler Bridge spanning the lower Columbia River offers a case study in the cormorant’s knack for...