Wildlife

After Winter Storm Kingston came through, I knew it could be an interesting time at the Great Bridge Locks. So once again, I headed out with my Nikon Z9 and brought along the Nikkor Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.4 VR lens because I wanted a little more reach for the eagles, and I felt I hadn’t used it much since getting it.

There was a lot of ice on the water, along with a lot of dead speckled trout due to the recent cold snap that brought arctic temperatures to our area. It was kind of funny to watch the pelicans come down and try to get the trout that were dead below the ice.

I had such a great time the week before, that I went back to the Great Bridge Locks again. Once again, I headed out with my Nikon Z9 and the Nikkor Z 100-400mm f/4.5–5.6 S lens, hoping to catch the local birdlife—and once again, the Locks didn’t disappoint.

I arrived about 45 minutes earlier than the previous week and started at the boat ramp. The Brown Pelicans were still there. Probably numbered around 100 or so. And they were busy.

I love mornings at the Great Bridge Locks, especially in the winter when the air is crisp and the wildlife is active. I headed out early with my Nikon Z9 and the Nikkor Z 100-400mm f/4.5–5.6 S lens, hoping to catch some local birdlife—and the Locks didn’t disappoint.

I didn’t arrive until almost 10am, much later than I would have liked. But almost immediately, I spotted a immature Bald Eagle flying over the water. It was looking for a late breakfast, right in front of a squadron of Brown Pelicans. There’s nothing quite like locking focus on an eagle in flight—the grace, the wingspan, the power.

Happy New Year! I started off 2025 with a morning of photography. I went to Battlefield Park in Great Bridge and walked around a little. Nothing like blue skies to quell my photography enthusiasm! But I captured a few images there and then moved on to Stumpy Lake Natural Area to see if anything was happening there. It was dead too. A few birds off in the distance. But other than one Great Blue Heron that I grabbed a couple images of, it was not much of a success. Hope the rest of my photographic journey is better in 2025!

On Saturday, December 7th, I got up early and took a cold drive down to Pea Island NWR on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was 19°F when I left and my heat was not working too good in my Jeep. I definitely need to take that in and get it looked at! In fact, it was still about 26°F when I started crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge to get over to the Outer Banks. But once I crossed, it was 36°F on the island and my heat started pumping a little more hot air.

I went out to Stumpy Lake Nature Area on Sunday morning to look for some birds to photograph. It’s been a bit slow this Fall. Actually, it’s been a bit slow for me since I’ve hardly done any bird photography. But the 40 days of no rain wasn’t helping either. Stumpy Lake was actually a puddle. But we did manage to finally get some rain last Friday. I brought along my Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR lens.

I decided to venture out to Pleasure House Point Natural Area in Virginia Beach on Sunday morning. I hadn’t been there since late May. I figured the ospreys have moved on but I was hoping some of the migrating birds would have started arriving by now. The first bird I was spotted was a Great Blue Heron who was roosting in a pine tree. I then walked all the way to the Brock Center without spotting any more birds. It had just been high tide about an hour before I was there, so that was definitely going to limit the bird action. I was happy to see they built the bridge near the Brock Center. When I first started coming here 5 years ago, there was a cinder block that you had to step on to cross a very small runoff between the larger part of the creek and a little pond. You could literally step over it and didn’t even really need the cinder block. But over the course of five years, this had turned into a pretty big ditch between the two. They have built a really nice bridge for walking over the water now. It has grown to be about 20 feet wide and about 2 feet deep in just 5 years.