Wild Delaware

There was a blizzard of snow geese everywhere today but I couldn’t seem to get close to any. But I found a couple of great blue herons in the early morning light.

The arrival of Autumn in Delaware now seems complete with cool mornings and tens of thousands of snow geese on and over the salt marshes of Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

A great blue heron grabs a mantis shrimp from the low tide mud flat of the Great Marsh near Lewes.

Surviving for more than 250 million years this “ancient mariner” is facing new threats to its existence. So too are the many species of migratory birds and sea creatures that depend on the horseshoe crab. Every spring tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs mate and lay millions of pinhead-sized eggs along the Delaware Bay beaches from Lewes to Woodland beach. And thousands of migratory shorebirds like red knot and dunlin come to feast on this protein.

All creatures great and small may sound cliché but my goal for Wild Delaware is to include the obvious - deer, herons, geese, et al - and also many of the creatures we seldom see.

About 10 inches shorter than a great egret, snowy egrets are quite common in Delaware’s shallow waters where they forage for small fish.

The demise of a young “button buck” gives new life to a variety of creatures from vultures to flies. This white-tailed deer was dead for just over a day and its body had been picked to the bone by scavengers. Late in the day the flies had taken over what was left and were breeding and laying eggs on the carcass. Flies are important in disposing of organic waste.

The temperature is still in the 80s but the arrival of thousands of snow geese and now the first blush of leaves changing color are sure signs of autumn. This morning I found a meadow filled with foxtails bent low with a heavy coating of dew. One red maple leaf caught on a stalk reminded me that despite the warm weather, autumn is on the way. And a snow goose feather resting on a blaze of saltwort confirmed the change of seasons.

Snow geese continue to fill a small saltmarsh pothole at dawn and today I was able to get the preflight photograph I have been trying to do for two days. Before snow geese take off to head to nearby fields they stretch their wings. I’ve been trying to get that shot but it takes a combination of the goose being in the right spot and enough light to capture the image. Today was the day!

The day dawned warm and clear with snow geese landing and taking off from a Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge pothole. Here’s my favorite from the morning.