Bombay Hook, Deleware

Bombay Hook is only 10-15 minutes away from the house we are staying in, so we were happy about that. As we pulled into the parking lot, the first thing we noticed was we had to pay a fee, but we didn’t know that we had to put the money in an envelope. We had put twenty dollars straight into the box, and then we realized that we had to put it into an envelope provided first, so we put another twenty dollars in. After we left the parking lot, we drove down a gravel road, and after a thousand or so feet, we drove around a corner and passed a small man-made “pool” called Raymond Pool, and then we drove past another man-made “pool” called Shearness Pool. We saw literally thousands of Snow Geese, and every time we looked up we saw lots of V’s, with hundreds of Snow Geese in each V. This morning, before we went birding, we went jogging down to Shearness Pool and back. It was 27o, and it actually felt good on my burning cheeks. Later tonight, as we were driving to Fowler Beach to see owls, we saw lots of what looked like snow, but then we realized that it was thousands of Snow Geese on the grass, hunkering down for the night. Every time we looked up, there were lots of V’s. We saw 3 or 4 Northern Harriers flying around, we might have seen one owl flying, but we aren’t sure. Besides the thousands of Snow Geese, we were also able to add several new species to our E-bird life list, including the Carolina Chickadee, Golden Crowned Kinglet, Snow Goose, Green Winged Teal, Northern Mockingbird, Northern Harrier, Turkey Vulture and more.

This Snow Goose was trying to catch up with the rest of the flock.

Notice the bright blue secondary feathers on this Blue Jay.

This Eastern Bluebird was eating from the Holly Bush.

The Eastern Bluebird was startled by something.