Wild Delmarva

A female Fall Webworm can lay 400 to 500 eggs which hatch and immediately begin to spin the web where they will grow as larvae. These will pupate turning into an almost pure white adult moth. Their nests are common across Delmarva and much of North America.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

It is August here on the Delmarva Peninsula and that means lots of hazy summer sunrises and sunsets. Here, with the help of a 600mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter, a Great Blue Heron fits perfectly inside the morning sun.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Earlier this week I posted a photograph of two Great Blue Herons fighting for a White Perch. Here’s another from that morning. The heron dropped the fish and continued fighting as the fish got away.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Goldfinch seem to be everywhere on Delmarva this summer and these handsome little finches are still colorful even though they are just beginning to molt. Strict vegetarians, they eat an entirely vegetable diet.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

A White-tailed Deer feeds in a field of tall vegetation.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Their elegant profile and striking colors make the American Avocet unique among Delmarva’s birds. They feed for invertebrates in shallow ponds by sweeping their long, curved bill side-to-side. Juveniles are similar to adults but have a light buff colored head.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Sunrise comes early in the summer so I often have to leave the house by 4:30 a.m. to get to where I will be photographing wildlife. But when I get to my “office” and it looks like this I realize how lucky I am to be photographing America’s wildlife and wild places. Here a group of Great Egrets and a few Great Blue Herons and a Snowy Egret stalk fish in a fresh water pond just after sunrise. Large pink and white Crimson-eyed Rose Mallow flowers complete the scene.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Red Drum are common on the lower portion of Delmarva where there underwater grasses and oysters thrive in the shallow waters. Drum are patrolling the shallows for blue crabs which is their primary forage this time of year. The next shed of crabs with the August full moon should have the fish schooled up and feeding heavily. This fish was swimming on a oyster bar near Fishermans Island, Virginia.

photograph by Jay Fleming

The moon rose almost full tonight and a Black-crowned Night-Heron was perched atop a dead tree waiting for darkness to fall. The most widespread heron in the world, Black-crowned Night Herons prefer to feed at night as well as dusk and dawn when most other herons are resting.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Sometimes it is easier to steal a fish than catch a fish. This morning, I caught two Great Blue Herons fighting over a White Perch in a fresh water pond. The fish was dropped in the skirmish and managed to swim away. Today, the fish was the winner. With Great Blue Herons that’s rarely the case.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming