Carolina Wild Photo (the blog)

Yep, that’s what I said, a “heated” birdbath. It’s really not that fancy, but it was designed specifically for bird photography, like the Bluebird image here.

The heating comes from an aquarium heater unit placed in the birdbath reservoir next to the fountain pump that continually circulates the water. It hardly makes it a “spa”, but it does keep the water from freezing in the winter. So far it has worked at least down to 5 degrees overnight, and even when it’s below freezing continually, every day for over two weeks in a row, with snow and sleet.
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On our third and last day of the trip we headed out around noon for Rachel Carson Reserve. Sunshine and near 70 degree temps would make for a very pleasant day, though the breezes were up from the previous two days. It turned out that the wind actually served to keep us from getting too warm, and was no problem for us. Like the previous days, the horses proved to be elusive.

We soon found the horses widely scattered on the marsh in small groups of two to four, requiring long treks in slippery, muddy muck to get closer to some. Others were beyond channels too deep to cross on foot. Relocating by boat would have been time consuming, only to get closer to one group while putting us much farther from any other group. There was nothing to be gained by chasing back and forth among them. We decided to try finding other groups in more easily reached areas. (continue reading…)

I’ll pick up my story from the previous post as we’re leaving Cape Lookout at midday after a successful morning of horse photography on Shackleford Banks. We made our way across Back Sound behind Shackleford aboard the “Calico Jack II”, with Capt. Monty of Seavisions Charters, headed for Rachel Carson Reserve. The sunny weather was beautiful, with calm wind and flat, glassy water, and temps close to 70 degrees. You couldn’t ask for a nicer December day.

When we reached the reserve, we spent over an hour checking out several areas of the reserve where we had found the horses the day before, but no luck. Finally we decided to check out the tidal flats on the ocean side of the reserve, despite them not being there the day before. Sure enough, we found the horses on the ocean side of the reserve, out feeding on the tidal flats, right where we would normally have expected to find them in good weather this time of day. (continue reading…)

The second day of my 3 day trip to Beaufort brought even nicer weather than on the first day. We headed for Shackleford first thing in the morning, and spotted Dolphin on the way to Shackleford, which is not uncommon.

Upon arrival we found a family group of horses on the sound side of the island near the eastern end. We landed near them on the beach at the edge of the maritime forest. Then we hiked through the trees toward the oceanside dunes, searching the high dunes for more horses, but had no luck there. Eventually we circled around to the sound side again and soon found more horses in the trees not far from our boat. (continue reading…)

Well, it’s been 2-1/2 years since my last blog post here. Not a situation of my choosing. Uncooperative weather, appointments and (mostly) Covid restrictions threw up multiple road blocks against traveling for photography. My return last week to Rachel Carson Reserve and Shackleford was planned and paid for 18 months ago when I thought the Covid mess was about to turn around. Finally though, I’ve jumped the hurdles and got in three beautiful days of weather Nov. 30 to Dec. 2 photographing the wild horses. It only goes to prove that even in “winter” you can have fun visiting the wild horses at Beaufort.

The first thing I saw when I set foot on Rachel Carson Reserve wasn’t wild horses, but a pair of Sandhill Cranes. That was quite a surprise, as this was my first sighting ever of Sandhill Cranes, and I didn’t know they frequented North Carolina’s coast at all. They were too far away for anything but an identification shot, but at least I have something to show. (continue reading…)