Wild Delaware

A flock of black ducks (with a mallard / black duck cross in the foreground) explode out of a pothole this morning in Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

Wildlife was cooperative today allowing me to get very close for several rather intimate portraits. Shovelers and puddle ducks were coming and going to the edge of a salt marsh and a red-tailed hawk posed for a close-up.

Tundra swan are beautiful and graceful in flight but watching these feathered behemoths take off you have to wonder how they can make into the sky at all. They breed on Canada’s tundra above Hudson Bay and make the long flight every fall to winter in Delaware and Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.

Snow geese were feeding in a soy bean field near Lewes this afternoon with groups of them feeding in one spot then flying to a short distance to continuing foraging for whatever they could find to eat.

Ice-cold dawn hues paint a wintery scene at Trussum Pond near Laurel this morning as the moon decends toward the horizon. Trussum and nearby Trap Pond hold one of the northernmost stands of baldcypress trees in America.

Great blue herons, of course, eat fish. But this one caught a fish and a mouthful of vegetation at the same time. No problem though as the heron was able to shake out the weeds and swallow the fish.

Open water was hard to find today as freezing temperatures the past few days brought ice to many of Delaware’s ponds and salt marshes. For wading birds like great blue herons and ducks like mergansers and shovellers open water is essential for their survival. These birds were all sharing an open spot at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

A cold snow blew from the north this afternoon covering Kent and Sussex counties with about an inch of powder. I headed toward Big Stone Beach and as the storm passed twilight warmed the western sky.

When I was growing up in Delaware back in the 60s and 70s it was very rare to catch sight of even one bald eagle. Now, while I’m working on my new book Wild Delaware I usually see an eagle or two every day. But to catch two perched side-by-side is still a rare find. This pair was sitting in a very tall tree near Milford today.

With a clear sky above and a full moon lighting the way, snow geese were coming to feed on a winter wheat field near Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge tonight. But with the price of wheat at more than $7 a bushel I could only wonder what dinner tonight cost the farmer with thousands of hungry geese gobbing as much of the crop as possible before dark.