Wild Delmarva

It is still raining and gloomy here on Delmarva so I’m adding a Snowy Egret stare down from last spring. These two feisty egrets are in full breeding plumage.

There is some migration news, in the past week some summer visitors to the peninsula – Laughing Gulls, Osprey and Snowy Egrets – have returned. Sure signs of spring!

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

We’ve had almost a week of cloudy, dark, rainy weather on the Delmarva Peninsula making wildlife photography all but impossible. Here’s a Great Blue Heron I photographed with the last light of last Sunday.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Since it has been cloudy and rainy most of this week with no good light for photography I’m posting another look the seal from earlier this month.

A young female Gray Seal pup – probably only about four months old – watches the sunrise from the surf on one of Delmarva’s Atlantic Beaches. Gray Seals are pupped in colonies from Eastern Canada as far south as Massachusetts so this pup has wandered many miles in a relatively short time. Gray Seal pups are weaned about three weeks after birth and they are on their own shortly after that.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Listed as a federally endangered species in 1967, the Delmarva Fox Squirrel has had a particularly tough winter. Many of the already small population didn’t survive the weeks of cold and snow this winter. I found this survivor feeding in a loblolly pine forest this week.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

If Delmarva were a state then the Great Blue Heron would likely be our state bird. They are year-round residents and are easily seen catching fish along the edges of our wetlands.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

Sunrise was really beautiful today. Gulls and sea ducks were flying over the water parallel to the Atlantic coast. The sun rose into a thin cloudy haze and the warm colors painted the sky red for a few minutes.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

The wild ponies of Assateague have been on the barrier Island since the 1600s. There are two stories about how they got there. In the first story, a Spanish ship sank off the coast and the ponies swam to the island. In the second story, a farmer or farmers let their ponies run wild there as there was no need to build a fence. However they made it to Assateague thousands of visitors come to the National Wildlife Refuge every year to see them in the wild.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

A Bufflehead takes off this morning shortly after sunrise. This is the smallest diving duck we have on the Delmarva Peninsula and they won’t be with us much longer as they breed in Canada.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

A Herring Gull holds a mussel on Assateague Island today. These gulls catch mussels and drop them on rocks to break open the shells and then eat the tasty bivalves.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming

A touch of frost rims a feather at sunrise.

Photograph by Kevin Fleming