Its been a busy couple of weeks. Went down to South Carolina to photograph waterfowl for a few days, returned home and unpacked only to repack the following day and leave out on a 3 day workshop down along the Crystal Coast. Despite the face that it is Feburary, we had some absolutely amazing weather. The first day was spent on the boat working with the horses of Shackleford Banks. Not only did we have horses feeding out on the marsh islands but we had LOADS of bottle nosed dolphins with us seemingly the entire time. We first stopped to photograph the dolphins in what we call channel leading out of the inlet. These guys were feeding pretty heavily along the edge of what we call The Drain over the shoals. Afterwords when we headed out into the ocean to shoot horses walking along the beach, we were greeted by probably another 20 that put on a show for us all around the boat.
The following day was spent over at Carrot Island photographing horses in the tidal flats and along the edge of Bird Shoal where we had a fantastic day. Quite surprisingly the was a new born foal on the island which we spent quite a bit of time following around. Interestingly there was also a foal over on Shackleford as well. This is completely different behavior that what we see up my way on Carova Beach with the wild horses. Our foaling season really doesn’t begin until May, though we will see some foals as early as April. Here it is mid February and these little guys were already about a month old! What a difference the climate makes when you drop south of Cape Hatteras along these islands.
