Catching up

We can never get over the beauty of a sunrise on the Pea Island Refuge . This past week was the Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival and the weather was just awesome. The days were in the low 70's and the nights were clear and in the low 60's. It was perfect for all involved. So many day and night refuge programs that everyone was always on the go.

I have a lot of Sunrise shots as Lauren and I had volunteered to do early morning Hospitality at Pea Island so we were there every morning at 6:15 each day to greet the early Birding tours and offer some coffee, tea or hot cider and an assortment of backed goods donated by the not so local bake shop, 25 miles away and what favorites Sam's club offered, 100 miles away in Virginia. We just loved talking to the Birders form all over the US and from Germany and France, China and Japan. Way cool working with the language barrier at times. Always love it when the Germans come in with a picture of a Raccoon and as they don't have any in Germany . Just great.

A young Cedar Waxwing hung out in front of the PI VC for 4 of the five days and there are now several thousand pictures of this poor bird all over the world today. It had been feasting on some fermented berries on the bushes by the VC and nothing really bothered it until the last day when a couple of Black rat snakes showed up and he beat a fast retreat.

With a little down time between birding tours and chance to grab a little coffee mocha and enjoy the sun. Each morning seemed a little weird as the wind always blows here and for 4 straight days it was almost non existent  . It made set easy but with no wind the mosquitoes made their little nasty selves at home with the blood tasting they enjoy so much. Thank the heavens for the all natural bug spray we have, smell great with no chemicals and it works. The mosquitoes here have stripes on their legs and cute faces.

Did I mention the beautiful Sunrise each day. Yea

The big woolly caterpillars are every where and if you believe in the old tales then we are in for a colder winter.

One of the beach water birding groups checking out the beach from the top of the dune across from the VC .

Lauren helping the Red Wolf Intern do his program before we go into Alligator River refuge for the after dark Red Wolf Howling. It is a really awesome program as we all drive into the amazingly dark refuge for several miles. AR is 155 thousand acres . We arrive at several gates to unlock and run the mosquito gauntlet as we arrive at our destination  .The Intern leaves us and disappears into the dark and few minutes later we can hear the Red Wolves howling off in the darkness. Just the best. These are the only Red Wolves still in the wild in the World. We had a chance to hear them when we were evacuated to Alligator River for the non hurricane . There are right now at least three separate groups moving around in this section of AR and we still hope they survive in the wild and  the government cut backs as they are slowly losing the fight for funding.