Wild Delaware

Thousands of snow geese seemed to be everywhere over the the salt marsh at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge this morning. Everywhere except where I was, that is. I couldn’t get close to any this morning so after sunrise I focused on several Foster’s terns who were having a very successful morning fishing a shallow pothole.

Snow geese, in numbers too large to count, are here now taking up their winter residence on the salt marshes along the Delaware Bay. Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge near Leipsic and Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge near Lewes provide thousands of acres of habitat and nearby freshly harvested fields provide plenty of food.

And this morning I found a lesser yellowlegs feeding along the edge of the snow goose-filled pothole.

I went back today at sunset to check on the same salt marsh pothole that was filled with snow geese this morning and there wasn’t a goose in sight. But there was a red fox…

The first migrating snow geese have been here for a week now but today was my first opportunity to photograph them on Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. It is interesting that I saw just a small flock of the first arriving geese last Saturday morning and now a week later the saltmarsh and sunrise sky is filled with thousands of these winter visitors from the arctic tundra.

I’m back from an assignment that took me to the West Coast and then to London, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. And I’m very happy to be back photographing Delaware wildlife again! The past few days have brought large concentrations of migrating great egrets, snowy egrets and the first flocks of snow geese to the salt marshes in and around Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Tony Pratt of Lewes showed me a salt marsh near Prime Hook that is covered with red saltwort (Salicornia europaea) and the spot is a favorite for dozens of egrets, a flock of shoveller ducks and a few gulls at sunrise. The bright autumn color of the Saltwort makes a great background for the feeding and flying birds. In the first photograph (below) two great egrets go after the same minnow at the same time. The egrets got into a feeding territory tussle and the fish went free.