Birding has been great. Delaware as a whole is a great birding place. The statewide Delaware list for the year is at something like 219 species. Not bad for a state with only three counties. You can drive the length of the state in about two hours. About two thirds of my goal for the year could be found just in Delaware. 
Catbird – common but try to get a picture of one.
The shorebird migration is happening. A number of the species have already come through but ruddy turnstones, semipalmated sandpipers, black-bellied plovers, and red knots are coming through now. In the right places thousands are counted in any given day.
Flying shorebirds.
Semipalmated sandpipers.
Mostly ruddy turnstones
Dunlin.
Semipalmated plover.
Semipalmated sandpiper.
Least sandpiper.
The shorebird migration, especially that of the red knots, is closely linked to the horseshoe crab migration. The crabs come ashore, mate, lay their eggs, and if they can, head back out to sea. The shorebirds come migrating in and fuel up on the eggs, getting enough energy to make it to parts way far north.
Mating horseshoe crabs.
Horseshoe crab party.
Party’s over.
Horseshoe crabs are rather ugly leftovers from the Jurrasic Period. For a long time they were not really appreciated by humans. I can remember my grandfather grousing when his grandchildren would throw turned over crabs back into the water because the crabs would take your fish bait. It was always disappointing when you though you were hauling in some lunker and it turned out to be one of these monsters. The crabs were massively harvested with trawlers to be ground up for fertilizer. Crab numbers plummeted and so did the migrating shorebirds. Once the migration connection was realized several states restricted crab harvests. Now people volunteer to go out and do crab censuses. Crab numbers are up and so are shorebird numbers. Just like magic.
Delaware is an interesting state with a lot of coastal habitat preserved. Most of my birding has been at Cape Helopen State Park, Bombay Hook NWR, Prime Hook NWR, and Port Mahon. All four are great places.
Cape Henlopen is here in Lewes. This is the point where the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet. During WWII it was Fort Miles, an army base with large coastal guns designed to protect Wilmington or Philadelphia by preventing enemy ships from going up the Delaware Bay. There was a companion base at Cape May, New Jersey. My Grandfather was stationed at Fort Miles before shipping out to Europe. The park has the ocean, the bay, open dune systems, and pine forests. Sure thing species include various gulls and terns, American oyster catchers, night hawks, chuck-will-widows, prairie warblers, pine warblers, and brown-headed nuthatches.
Cape Henlopen. Delaware Bay to the left, Atlantic Ocean beyond the point.
Bombay Hook and Prime Hook have similar ecological systems. A lot of estuary systems with open water and coastal marshes interspersed with grasslands or forests. Both refuges have a number of impoundments where water levels are controlled. Bombay Hook is renowned as a major shorebird migration area with a driving tour around the impoundments. I have been at Bombay Hook when there were thousands of shorebirds in the impoundments.
Bombay Hook salt marsh.
Bombay Hook is right outside the town of Leipsic. Leipsic was founded in 1720 and since then their major source of income has been speeding tickets. Leipsic does have Sambo’s Tavern. Sambo’s sits right on the Leipsic River and the fishing, crab, and oyster boats use their dock for unloading.
Sambo’s.
View from the dining room – oyster boat coming in.
Sambo’s is the place to go after a long morning at Bombay Hook. It has a lot of character, due in no small part to the characters hanging out at the bar. The dining area is a large room with newspaper covered tables, mismatched chairs, and a roll of paper towels on the table. These folks are set up for some serious messy eating, mostly in the form of crustaceans you smack apart with mallets. You gotta love a meal they serve with mallets. Doesn’t work too well with pancakes but is essential for crabs.
Instead of the crabs I usually go for their fried oysters. As Jimmy Buffet says, “Give me oysters and beer, every day of the year and I’ll feel fine.” In this case the preferred beer is Yuengling draft, a fine Pennsylvania tradition. Oldest legal brewery in the United Sates. Family owned and managed since 1829.
OK, this is a slightly off topic rant. Pennsylvania also used to produce another great independent beer called Rolling Rock. It was a fine quaffing beer and went great with crabs, crab cakes, steamed clams, and playing darts or pool in a dark bar. Then Anheuser Busch bought the brewery and moved production from Latrobe Pa. to New Jersey. New Jersey for God’s sake. They claimed that there would be no difference in the water and no difference in the beer. Let’s see, untainted mountain spring water or something out of the Passaic River. Which would I want to drink? By the time any water in New Jersey makes it into a bottle it’s been in and out of dozens of bladders. Ann Rand may think this is the way to go but I sure don’t. OK, rant over, back to the story line.
A bit south of Bombay Hook is Port Mahon. This place was a port for fishing boats and I believe tankers at one time. I can remember my Grandfather going there to buy fish right off the boats. It consists of a road servicing docks along the Delaware Bay coastline.
The road is a great example of man verses nature and man losing. For decades the State would build the road up, then the next good storm or a really good tide would tear it out. I think they finally gave up on it. There are a couple working docks but mostly the skeletons of docks long dead. Crabbers, oyster men, and fishermen launch small boats there but otherwise the use is from day fishermen and birders. Port Mahon is a great shorebird place. Years ago this is where Lise and I got our life Eurasian Widgeon, thanks to Anita’ sharp eyes.
Bet you didn’t think a Honda Odyssey could Baja over this, did you?
Long dead docks and piers.
Prime Hook has a lot of habitat but it does not have the accessibility or the renown as Bombay Hook. One nice thing is that Prime Hook is a lot closer to Lewes than Bombay Hook is. The more northern part of the refuge has a colony of several hundred nesting black skimmers. Really cool birds but tough to get pictures of them.
Prime Hook in the fog.
Clapper rail, calling for girls.
Clapper rail in the fog.
Sneaking around.
Great egrets.
Snowy egret.
Great blue heron preening for the ladies.
Black skimmer foraging.
Black skimmer in fog.
The only problem with Bombay Hook, Prime Hook, and Port Mahon are the nasty flesh eating bugs they have there. These aren’t just blood sucking parasites like ticks or TV evangelists. These are piranha with wings. Tiny bugs with the attitude of a great white shark. They can strip a grown man to the bone in two minutes. As soon as you park they swarm around the car waiting for you to dare expose some skin. My pasty white skin looks like an order of honky eggs and scrapple to them. Meat’s back on the table boys!
Man eating bugs. Taken from the safety of the Honda.
One other place of note is Trapp Mill Pond State Park. The park as a canoe trail through a cypress forest. Anita and I did the trail on kayaks and I got three new species there. This is almost primordial. After crossing the small lake you are in a dark narrow channel kayaking through the cypress trees. This is where a dinosaur could pop up, or maybe the pterodactyls from Johnny Quest. Too cool!
Cypress swamp.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 