Carolina Wild Photo (the blog)

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.

This was December after all, and their habits weren’t following the routine I had come to expect from my visits in Spring and Fall. Weather, tides and the search for food take them where they need to go. But that’s to be expected when photographing wild animals of any kind.

We returned to Capt. Monty’s carolina skiff, the “Calico Jack II”, and headed out around the eastern end of Shackleford to find more horses. This took us past a small island that’s always popular with the bird life here.
This day the Brown Pelicans had taken over the island to sun themselves. It was an opportunity to take some flight shots of these graceful aerial acrobats as they circled the island looking for just the right spot to land.

Then it was on to the east end of Shackleford, where we quickly spotted more horses right from the boat. They were feeding among the dunes closest to the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. It was a chance to take photos of the horses with the historic lighthouse in the background – not something you often have the opportunity to do.

Among the horses near the lighthouse was a young stallion with a long, thick blonde mane that hung over his eyes. He stood alone, a good 100 yards from the other horses, and never budged from where he stood for the entire time we were there taking photos. He could have been a statue. The only thing he did was to shift which foot he was resting. He may have been sleeping, but there was no way to tell, since neither eye was visible behind the long, thick mane.

It had been a busy morning, with a lot of walking, so when noon arrived we decided to boat over to the lighthouse for a break and to eat our snacks we brought for lunch. We knew the lighthouse would not be open, but surprisingly, the gift shop was open. After spending far too much money there we went back to the boat and had our snacks before setting off across the sound for Rachel Carson Reserve for our afternoon photos. We hoped the horses would be easier to find and would be out of the trees this time, preferably on the tidal flats where we could get better shots.

Teaser: We’ll have swimming horses for you coming up in Part 3 – Return to Rachel Carson Reserve and Shackleford Banks.

The photo below shows a view from atop a high dune on Shackleford Banks, scanning about for the wild horses.