Wild Delmarva

One of Delaware’s best wildlife shows is happening right now along the shore of the Delaware Bay. Horseshoe Crabs are laying their eggs and a variety of birds including gulls, Red Knots, Semi-palmated Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstones, Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitchers and Willet are coming to feast on the eggs. You can see the birds in action from Kitts Hummock (east of Dover) to Slaughter Beach. But hurry, this show will only last for a few more days as many of the migrants will head north to breed.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

With its brilliant blue feathers ruffled, an Indigo Bunting sings its warbling song. On Delmarva, these colorful birds are common near abandoned fields and forest edges.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

With a song that sounds like an insect and a penchant for grasshoppers and other insects it is no surprise that this elusive and furtive little sparrow is known as a Grasshopper Sparrow. You can find them on Delmarva’s open grassy areas.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Here is something you don’t see every day. We all know the Honeybee as they are quite common buzzing around backyards gathering flower nectar and pollen. But you seldom encounter a swarm on the move. These social insects live in hives that may contain as many as 20,000 bees. On occasion, Honeybees change the location of their hives and you can see the swarm on the move. These bees were bedding down for the night on a tree branch.

Photographs by Kevin Fleming

How did the American Bullfrog get its name? Its deep, resonate baritone call sounds so much like a cow mooing that it earned the name Bullfrog. Common across Delmarva, this is a female is about the size of a teacup and she can lay as many as 20,000 eggs.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

You have probably seen Horned Larks from a distance as you drive around Delmarva’s rural areas. North America’s only native lark, they are easily seen feeding on weed and grass seeds in farm fields. But it is only when you get close you can see the feather tufts that give this handsome lark its devilish name. It is interesting too that while the adults eat mostly seeds they feed insects to their young.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

The Horseshoe Crab egg smörgåsbord is in full swing now along the shore of the Delaware Bay and a wide variety of birds are coming to feast. Here, a Willet gets splashed by a wave of mud breaking on the beach.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Some days are better than others with wildlife. All of the photographs in this post were taken yesterday morning between sunrise and just a few hours later.

When you are photographing wildlife it is impossible to schedule any subjects. If you are a good observer you can learn to predict where you will find animals and when they might be likely to be there. For example, I found the osprey (above) in almost the same tree as the day before. Not only that, he had caught another large fish and landed to the minute as the day before.

Then there is the randomness of photographing wildlife. A few minutes after photographing the osprey I found this very large Snapping Turtle in the wetlands surrounding a fresh water impoundment. I moved in pretty close for a portrait and the snapper stood its ground.

After about an hour along Delaware Bay wetlands I joined my Wild Delaware book collaborator Jeffrey A. Gordon in search of songbirds along the edge of a pine forest. I can only hope to learn one tenth as much about birds and nature as Jeff knows. He can identify most every bird on Delmarva from its song, even if very distant. Within a couple of hours we were able to get close to a Prairie Warbler, Eastern Bluebird, Common Yellowthroat and an Indigo Bunting. By then the light was getting too bright and harsh and it was time to quit. But, without any doubt, it was a great morning in my wildlife “office.”

Photographs by Kevin Fleming

Snapping Turtle

Prairie Warbler

Eastern Bluebird

Common Yellowthroat

Indigo Bunting

A Short-billed Dowitcher, sporting its colorful golden breeding plumage, comes in for a landing tonight on the Delaware Bay shore. Short-billed Dowitchers are very similar to Long-billed Dowitchers and they are common on Delmarva along beaches and mudflats.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

At the top of the seafood food chain Osprey feed almost exclusively on live fish. Our Osprey population declined between the 1950s and the 1980s because of agricultural use of DDT, a synthetic insecticide that made its way into fish. Eating fish with DDT caused Osprey egg shells to become thin and break during incubation. DDT use was banned in 1972 and once the insecticide worked its way out of the ecosystem Delmarva’s Osprey populations rebounded. This male Osprey is eating an Atlantic Menhaden just after sunrise this morning.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming