Wild Delmarva

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.

This Red Fox kit with a mouthful of Starling that I photographed in May 2009 will be in Wild Delmarva. Photographing young foxes here on the peninsula is not too difficult. Catching a moment like this makes a special image.

Sometimes it may be easier to steal a fish rather than catch a fish. That’s what this Forster’s Tern may have been thinking when it tried to take a fish away from a Snowy Egret. But I don’t think it was counting on a reprisal from the egret.

Selecting the photographs that make the book from tens of thousands of images can be challenging but not with a moment like this. Here, a Royal Tern feeds a fish to its chick and I was very lucky – even at 9 frames a second – to catch the split-second handoff. More challenging than catching moments and editing just the right image would be picking out your chick from the hundreds in this tern colony. To my eye, all of the terns and chicks look pretty much the same. But the parents can pick their chicks out of the crowd.

A skull is about all that’s left of this female Minke Whale that died along the Delmarva coast a year ago. While they may sound large – up to 38 feet long and as much as 13 tons when fully grown – Minkes are our smallest whales off the peninsula.

A year ago this month Delaware’s first ever Roseate Spoonbill landed on Fenwick Island. Birdwatchers came from far and wide to witness this southern bird that is much more at home in Florida and along the Gulf Coast. I was lucky enough to get close to this rare pink bird and will be including this image in Wild Delmarva.

Wild Delmarva is now in the layout and design process and will go to the printer in just over two weeks. Wild Delmarva will be released the first week of November and if you have signed up with our pre-publication special you will be one of the first to see the new book.

We are going to be using the best of the best photographs shot over the past year and a half. I’ll be sharing a new image from the book here every day until Wild Delmarva arrives. This adolescent Great Blue Heron having a “bad hair day” is one of my favorite images and will be on the back cover of Wild Delmarva.

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Thanks, Kevin Fleming

Here’s a creature with an identity crisis. Some might think this unusual insect is a hummingbird as it flies, hovers and its wings hum just like a hummingbird. Then there is the issue that it looks like a Bumblebee. But it neither a bird or a bee but it is a Hummingbird Moth a.k.a. Bumblebee Moth. Like many moths they have a very long tongue they use to gather the nectar of long-necked flowers.