Back home from Delaware. Sorry but Okemos just doesn’t match up. Let’s see, beaches, the ocean, and great birding or corn fields and subdivisions, hmmmmm.
Got one more good bird in Delaware before having to head back here. A great cormorant down at the Indian River Inlet. Lifer for me too. It was crazy windy out on the jetty but worth it to get a lifer.
Molly on the jetty in the wind.
The great cormorant made five new ones for the year this trip. Tried for snow buntings too. Lots of fields that should have had flocks of snow buntings but no go. Lise went to West Lafayette for the holiday and got snow buntings on the way back. So at least I know they aren’t a mythical bird. They do exist somewhere.
I thought we might see the effects of Hurricane/tropical storm/nor’easter Sandy along the coast but there really wasn’t much to see. At Cape Henlopen there was a small dune blowout that allowed you to see the surf from up in the parking area. The rest of the beach and dunes looked pretty much the same. Down at Indian River it was obvious that the road was flooded and sand covered the road. It’s all clear now and if you weren’t familiar with the place you wouldn’t notice anything. Some of the seasonally closed stores on the Rehobeth boardwalk still had a few sandbags piled up at their doors. Most were open for the holiday shoppers.
Two years ago the place took a hurricane hit and a couple weeks ago the storm of the century barreled through. You couldn’t tell without looking hard. The beach may have changed some but it’s still there. The dunes may have shifted but they’re still there. The dolphins are still jumping just off shore. Sanderlings still run through the surf. Surf fishermen still catch some of the weirdest looking fish you’ll ever see. It’s an ecological system designed to take extremes and just keep on plugging along. It’s all about adaptability and resilience. Gives a timelessness kind of quality to the place. 
Foggy morning Cape Henlopen.
Foggy morning Cape Henlopen.
Foggy morning Cape Henlopen.
It’s not a pristine wilderness. You’re rarely alone. Everywhere you look there are human impacts. Just about every form of humanity has been through here. Indigenous peoples, settlers, pirates, smugglers, fishermen, traders, farmers, and some combination of the above. If the fishing is slow you smuggle some rum. All have made their mark but somehow the marks get swallowed up and become part of the system. Hopefully the strip malls out on Highway 1 will get swallowed up. Those things are about as classy as napkin rings at Donner Pass.
No idea what these were for. Now they’re just part of the scenery.
Cape Henlopen State Park is a major public beach access site for swimmers, sunbathers, fishermen, and beach lovers. Some of the best birding in Delaware. Guaranteed place to get brown-headed nuthatches. Except for some lookout towers and the occasional bunker most users don’t realize Cape Henlopen State Park was once Fort Miles. Built to prevent ships from going up the Delaware Bay to attack Wilmington or Philadelphia, Fort Miles had a battery of honking big coastal artillery with all the supporting infrastructure. My grandfather was stationed at Fort Miles with the 213th Coastal Artillery before heading to Europe in WWII. Time and shifting sand have removed most of the traces of the fort. People hiking through the park think they are going over small hills but the hills are the tops of old bunkers.
Lookout tower.
People would pay major money for a condo with the view from this tower. The soldiers probably hated it.
Somewhere in those pines there used to be an Army fort.
One big shooting iron.
Another big shooting iron.
The animals seem to tolerate our follies. Long gone docks become roost sites. Turkey vultures love to roost on the lookout towers. Osprey use electrical poles for perches and nest sites. Their wingspan is long enough that on takeoff, their wings could cross wires and electrocute them. Somebody figured out that if you put orange highway cones on the poles, the birds can roost there without getting electrocuted. Sitting on an orange traffic cone on top of an electrical pole doesn’t seem to bother the ospreys.
Old pier.
Osprey adapting.
Since getting back we got another species. Thanks to dedicated birders and the local email listserve we got a western grebe here on Lake Lansing. We also chased a whooping crane that was spotted down in Jackson by the State Prison. Actually on the prison farm fields amongst hundreds of sandhill cranes. And yes, we did have a guard come by to ask what we were doing. We obviously were not the first ones because he asked if we were checking on the cranes. We went to the Heanlhe preserve to watch the cranes come in, hoping the whooper would show up there. In about an hour and a half time span over 6,000 sandhill cranes were counted coming into the sanctuary. No whooper though. Still, watching over 6,000 cranes fly in was kind of nice.
The great cormorant and western grebe bring my total to 322. The snow buntings and western grebe bring Lise’s total to 304 and we have a combined total of 324. Still some chasing to do around here but we are going to need that Florida trip to hit 350.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 