Salt Marsh

Walking around today, I arrived at the Hazard Rd. end of Gooseneck Cove when conditions were exactly right: overcast, soft light, high tide, calm waters, and birds feeding. I knew things were going right when a Green Heron fluttered down out of the sky to land among the reeds to the left of the road. Down on the high-tide-flooded mud flats two Snowy Egrets and a Great Egret were chasing down lunch. And down the road and around the corner the Double-Crested Cormorants were off Tern Rock and down in the water feeding on the influx of food flooding in with the tidal flow. It was a day of soft light and reflections, perfect for photography.

Green Heron

Great Egret

An immature Snowy Egret

A pair of immature Double-Crested Cormorants

While I was photographing the Cormorants an older man and his grandson came up to look. The man was not at all happy with the Cormorants, complaining that they were "consuming too much" and that this was the reason for fish shortages, as Gooseneck Cove is an important breeding ground for local fish populations. Of course, he's wrong. These Cormorants and their ancestors, and the Egrets and Herons and Terns and Ospreys and Blues Crabs, etc., have been feeding on the small fish in these waters for eons - long before the first humans came on the scene - and the fish populations have never fallen short because of their feeding. It's we humans who are interfering, overfishing and destroying the breeding grounds of the fish. It's a shame that man saw fit to blame Nature for a problem he (he's a local fisherman) and his/our kind actually caused. Maybe his grandson will learn better.

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger