Wild Delmarva

Last September a storm deposited shells and rocks on Delaware’s Atlantic beaches. Usually this spot holds only a few shells so this was an unexpected treat. I photographed this with a 14mm lens that was placed flat on the beach.

“My what big teeth you have,” would be the obvious caption for this Red Fox I found tired and yawning near sunset last August. Several Red Fox photographs made the final cut for Wild Delmarva.

If Delmarva were a state and the State of Delmarva had a bird it would certainly be the Great Blue Heron. Year-round residents here, these handsome birds with a unique silhouette can be found along the edges of many ponds, rivers and salt marshes that have fish. On days when you can’t find any other interesting wildlife on the peninsula, you can usually find a Great Blue Heron.

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.