Starting over in Maryland

The move to Maryland has been about as efficient as I could have imagined, but I STILL hate moving. Aside from the physical hassles, though, there are parts of the move that have me very excited. I realize that going from Illinois to Maryland isn't exactly the ecological equivalent of going from the Amazon to the Antarctic, for example, but the flora and fauna of Maryland are substantially different from what we had in Illinois. And I am excited to discover and photograph all of it!

To begin with, we are now on an acre that is surrounded by mature hardwood trees. Shagbark hickory, tulip poplar - large, impressive trees. These trees are home to their own ecosystems that I didn't have in Illinois. We lived in a "cornfield community" - build the houses in a cornfield. No mature trees. Not much variation in the birdlife. We saw ONE squirrel in 7 years in our yard - and I think it was VERY lost! We usually had one hummingbird per summer meander through our yard. Here we had 4 at our feeder the first evening we put it out.

There were no lizards in our area before. Now the skinks are daily sightings. We have bluebirds in the front yard.

I am REALLY enjoying the diversity here. And that's just the yard - the Chesapeake Bay and Patuxent River are each a few miles away and offer a myriad of wildlife to enjoy. I see a nest of ospreys every day when I cross the bridge on the Patuxent River. Bald eagles are common as are all the shorebirds.

I'll certainly get back into the original focus of this blog - fish and fishing - as I'm here longer, but for the time being, you'll have to be content with the yard critters.

Hope you enjoy the photos, and sorry for the long sabbatical.



The first week were in the house, my wife spied this 4' black rat snake crawling up one of our trees while we were sitting on the deck.



This orb spider is HUGE - it has to be 4 inches from front to back. There are some seriously big spiders here!






We have a big butterfly bush at the deck in the back of the house. It is loaded with butterflies, many of which are not familiar to me. I plan to post a bunch of butterfly pictures.

Finally, my plans include some hummingbird pictures. The ones I've taken so far are so bad I can't post them. Bear with me - we'll get some eventually.