Wildlife photo thread

There was a small shark there at one time. Liked the scraps from the fish cleaning station.

Definitely wild life. And I strongly prefer to see them in the wild than in captivity. What a cutie!

Not my picture, but I saw one of these today, lazily swimming in front of me. I opted to watch it rather than try to get my phone out and take a pic. American Eel. I’ve never seen one in this creek before. It was about 2.5 or more feet long.

Edit again: looked like this, but longer, and was cruising in the water.

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White Ibis flying to roast at the coast

Brown and White Pelicans at the coast

Dolphin checking us out

Coyote crossing the upper Chattooga River. That’s not a road runner watching



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OMG!! You are killing me. I want to be there, not stuck at my desk.

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Have camera, will torture. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Pru, my Dad took us fishing on the Edisto River and we caught a mess of eels. My job was to skin them. I was a preteen and swore those were the last eels I’d ever catch and they were.

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That sounds unpleasant.

I often marvel at how this beautiful creek that I have paddled many hundreds of times still enchants and delights me in familiar ways. Seeing this eel was unexpected and new to me - I’ve only ever seen them in the ocean. I had no idea they lived there. I’m still tickled by the experience.

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In grad school I helped a guy collect the very small elvers as they were coming through brackish water after swimming from the Sargasso Sea where they are born. They where heading for freshwater to grow to adulthood. Sea Grant was interested in culturing them for the Asian market at that time. Their life history is truly amazing.

Photo from google images

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Just hard work and fishy. Securing the head to skin them was not easy. I ’ the sanded’ the slime off in our sand box.

We used to nail the head to a piece of wood.

A clipboard with a heavy spring worked.

As a teen I once watched a commercial fisherman that fished for Bullhead Catfish in Lake Kissimmee, FL. He could skin a cat fish in the blink of an eye. He had a nail sticking up through his his cleaning table and would slap the head onto the nail, and pull the skin off with one pull.

That’s how we skin them also single edge razor blade and two vice grips.

Just curious do the purple martins still fly every sunset to bomb island?

Yes, in July and August. I didn’t get out with the sailing club recently when they went to see them.

They left there for several years and went to Lake Monticello, SC, but have come back to the island.

That’s great when I used to visit there a lot I would take the pontoon boat over every evening and we would anchor up and watch them. It is really amazing how they all fly on queue from 360 degrees and almost black out the sky. Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t script it better.

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Yay, Canada finally reopened! Loons every day at The Massasauga.

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Here is a critter that is common around salt marsh. They make good bait for some fish. The male fiddler card has one enlarged claw for waving in the air to attach females, and threaten and fight with other males. They have borrows that they go down when you get close to them. They are seen in great numbers on the exposed mud at low tide.

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The fiddlers, think they’re the ones I see on the James River salt marshes, but not the same vibrant colors. I enjoy watching them scurry up the banks. I wish we had them further north.

Remember “my” ducks? Well I don’t have a new pic, but I do have an update. No one around here would help me with these domestic ducks, but the ducks have helped themselves. They wandered up the creek a bit from the marina to a restaurant that is on the water’s edge, and they appear to have integrated into a group of wild ducks. It’s kind of funny, because these two are more than twice as big as the wild ducks, but I’ve seen them there consistently for over a week. The restaurant workers have been feeding them all, but I’m not sure if they will continue through Winter. If not, I will.

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This guy was chilling at put in, maybe 7" across:

These were watching me intently as I passed by:

Seagull chasing one of the eagles off:
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And two curious seals were checking me out, really hard to capture:
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EDIT: Seeing these pictures (taken with my Pixel XL 2) make me realize I should probably get a nice camera…