Wild Delaware

Colored leaf-green, Rough Green Snakes spend most of their life climbing vines, shrubs and trees in search of spiders and insects. Their range is mostly below the Mason-Dixon Line with Delaware being pretty much their northernmost habitat.

Canary Creek ebbs and flows with waters from The Great Marsh in Lewes. Last night the water was dead calm mirroring the beautiful moonrise.

From wildlife to wildflowers, there are many beautiful things to photograph for a book titled Wild Delaware. Some subjects like these wildflowers burst into color briefly and then blend back into the green summer foliage. Here’s a look at three plants blooming now.

marsh mallow

butterfly milkweed

monkey flower

I spent the morning lying motionless on the sand in the middle of a ghost crab colony at Cape Henlopen State Park. These little crabs, ranging in size from about a dime to a silver dollar, are called ghosts because of their ability to instantly disappear into their holes whenever they sense danger. Their eyes have sharp 360° degree vision which allows them to catch low-flying insects. But mostly, they feed on whatever they can scavenge from the ebb and flow of the tide.

These young osprey are ready to fledge and will soon soar above the wetlands that surround Cape Henlopen State Park. Nearby the rich waters of the Delaware Bay and Lewes and Rehoboth canal provide a fishing paradise.

OK, I admit Osprey are one of my favorite subjects. Today I was able to get very close to this fledgling. Here are two rather intimate portraits.

Today dawned with a huge red sun magnified by a layer of haze hugging the horizon. My son Jay took me by boat to a rookery on Indian River Bay that we had photographed several times before. The Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons were there as expected along with a flock of Oyster Catchers and a special prize for me, a Clapper Rail. I’ve seen Clapper Rails before but only for a second or two at a time as they disappear into a thick, green thatch of salt marsh cordgrass.  Before we left, we saw a female Red-Winged Blackbird and Brown Pelicans.  In less than two hours we had witnessed a nice variety of wildlife and the dawn of a beautiful day.

Great Egret

Great Egrets

Oyster Catchers

Clapper Rail

female Red-winged Blackbird

Brown Pelicans

A Snowy Egret is surrounded by hungry gulls that would try to make the egret drop the fish it caught. The gulls were successful several times and the egret gave up and left the area.

Northern Green Frogs are common along much of the East Coast where they inhabit fresh water ponds, streams and marshes. This guy may look calm enough but he is waiting for something - almost anything - to wander by. Northern Green Frogs eat pretty much any living thing they can capture and swallow.

An Osprey brings a half-eaten carp toward its nest in Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge near Broadkill Beach this morning.  Normally, the males do most of the fishing and eat their fill of the catch before returning to the nest. There are at least three nesting pairs of Osprey near the fresh-water impoundment on the refuge there and the fish are plentiful this year.

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