Wild Delaware

Man and nature blend in beautiful harmony on the grounds of Winterthur Museum near Centreville Delaware. That’s where I found this groundhog surveying a daffodil dotted hillside. Sometimes called a woodchuck, land beaver and even a whistlepig, groundhogs are rodents like squirrels and marmonts and their thick claws allow them to dig large underground burrows.  Ask any Delaware farmer what they call groundhogs and you will probably get a less harmonious name.

Why are these Ring-billed gulls collecting and fighting over sticks in coastal Sussex County? According to Jeff Gordon, one of Delaware’s best-known bird experts, these gulls nest near the Great Lakes hundreds of miles from here. Is this some early mating behavior? I watched them as they picked up sticks only to drop them a few yards away where other Ring-billed gulls would grab the sticks and repeat the process. It will be interesting to watch and see if these gulls start a nesting colony here in Delaware this year.

It is spring and the Greater Yellowlegs look a little squirrely as they go through their mating displays. This dating game took place last night in a shallow, brackish pond near Lewes.  

The secret of good wildlife photography is getting close. In fact, you can almost never get too close. But last week things got a little too close. I was photographing this young squirrel on a post when he made a leap for my camera landing right inside my lens shade. Way too close for even a macro lens! My friend Tony Pratt captured the moment as I helped the little guy to a safer perch on top of the camera.

The bird egg collection at the Delaware Museum of Natural History is an incredible treasure of thousands of eggs from around the world. With the help of Dr. Jean Woods, the museum’s Director of Collections, I photographed some of their Delaware songbird eggs this week. Robin egg blue is actually a Crayola crayon color so it is easy to find those eggs in this photograph. But how many of our backyard birds can you identify from their eggs? In the left column starting at the top they are Orchard Oriole, Red-winged Blackbird, Eastern Towhee, Northern Cardinal, American Robin and Gray Catbird. And in the right column from the top they are Blue Jay, Carolina Chickadee, Song Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow and Seaside Sparrow.

This morning brought a beautiful sunrise and then frustration. Heavy, low clouds stretched to the horizon at Cape Henlopen State Park and there was nice light for maybe five minutes at sunrise. Then the sun disappeared behind the dark clouds and my morning as a photographer was done.

As spring warms into summer, baby animals will soon be found in Delaware’s ponds, marshes, woods and fields. Today I photographed a young red fox and gray squirrel from this year’s early brood.

After a week of really bad light the past two foggy mornings were very visually refreshing, to say the least.  I love photographing in the fog as things that are common and ordinary become beautiful and mystical.  Yesterday I found a family of four deer as they made their way across a shallow pond. This morning a green field of winter wheat offset a stand of trees lost in the fog.

From a distance pipefish look like a worm especially when caught by a hungry bird. But they are really a small fish in the seahorse family. This is a Greater Yellowlegs about to swallow a pipefish while feeding in the shallow water of Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge yesterday near sunset.

Snowy Egrets are back after their winter migration to the south and the sun was back in the Thursday afternoon sky finally after being gone for a week.  I found ten egrets wiggling their yellow toes in the shallow water at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.  Their toes attract fish and the fish become dinner.