Wild Delmarva

This preening Great Egret was a cover candidate for Wild Delmarva (the fighting Great Blue Herons won out) but this photograph did land on the cover of Delaware Beach Life magazine. In Wild Delaware this image is on page three opposite the beginning of Tom Horton’s foreword. The photograph was taken with a Nikon 600mm f4 VR lens on an August morning without a breath of wind so the water was flat calm.

It is fun to put down the 600mm telephoto lens and pick up the macro to look more closely at wildlife and nature. No one I know is better at finding things that slither and crawl than Jim White at the Delaware Nature Society. He led me to this colorful Long-tailed Salamander that lives along streams and springs in the northern Piedmont region of Delmarva. At only about 6 inches long, it is easy to overlook some of our more interesting creatures.

If the Delmarva Peninsula had a celebrity “rock star” bird it might the the Red Knot. Bird watchers gather from far and wide to witness their annual migration stop along the shores of the Delaware Bay. Every May this tiny bird flies non-stop from South America to feast on Horseshoe Crab eggs being laid along the shore of the bay. They are only here for a short time before they continue their trans-continental migration to breed in Canada’s tundra. This little bird has one of the longest annual migrations of any species and can travel more than 9,000 miles annually.

It is hard to think of a tiny four-inch bird as “big game” but photographing this little Yellow Warbler is more challenging that most of Delmarva’s better known species. First, because they are so small, you have to get close even when using a 600mm super-telephoto lens. Then, because they flit around so unpredictably, you have to be ready to catch the moment they take off. Some of the photographs in Wild Delmarva I’m most happy with are the more unusual species like this warbler and the Barn Swallows I posted yesterday.

I photographed these squabbling Barn Swallows a year ago in June using a 600mm lens. With that long telephoto lens there is virtually no depth of field. Your subject is either tack sharp or it is out of focus. I focused on the eye of the swallow on the phragmites and was very happy to see the flying swallow’s eye in exactly the same plane and sharp too. Sometimes, if you photograph wildlife enough, things line up just right.

Wild Delmarva is on press this week and my assistant Autumn is in China supervising the printing. We are on schedule for delivery the first week of November.

My Wild Delmarva book is now at the printer in China and Autumn (my incredibly talented assistant) is overseeing the printing as I write this post. I photographed this Indigo Bunting last May and this handsome bird made the final cut for the book.

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.

There are more than 300 species of birds on Delmarva in a year but only about 30 species of mammals. So I’m always happy to find one of our more elusive mammals like this industrious Beaver that I photographed last May.

My assistant Autumn leaves tomorrow for China to supervise the printing of Wild Delmarva. We are right on schedule to have the book out the first of November.

I was photographing egrets last summer when I saw something moving behind them. It was close to sunrise and the light was still low but I managed to catch this Raccoon family wading across a shallow pond. Truly a moment as this scene lasted only long enough for a couple of frames and I’m really happy I was able to catch them.

I have been photographing Wild Delmarva pretty much every sunrise and sunset there is good light for the past year-and-a-half. There have been lots of beautiful mornings along the way but this one of the young Great Blue Herons in June 2009 watching the sunrise seems special. This Delmarva inland bay rookery has been a great spot for photography with several images from here making the final cut for Wild Delmarva.

Striped Bass range from Maine to the Carolinas and can weigh more than 80 pounds. Every year, a large percentage of all of the East Coast’s Striped Bass return to Delmarva in the spring to spawn. They are a favorite catch of sport fishermen here on the peninsula.