Bill and I had the opportunity to photograph a wonderful sunrise at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge yesterday morning. Bombay Hook NWR is located in Smyrna, Delaware – just outside of Dover. It’s about 100 miles from Washington, DC – a nice easy drive. We’ve been to Bombay Hook a couple of times, and we will definitely head back there again.

We photographed sunrise from at Shearness Pool. We parked at stop #4 on the Auto Tour. From this spot, you can photograph out across the marshes to where the sun is rising, and catch the light the early morning light on the pond. It’s a wonderful place.

I started out photographing some of the trees in the distance – near where the sun was going to rise. The sky was filled with wonderful soft colors.

Each year thousands of Snow Geese spend the winter at Bombay Hook NWR. In the morning, you can see them take off from the water in large groups and they seem to fill the sky. Here is one of the groups taking flight in the early morning light.

As the sun rose above the horizon, I started looking in the direction of where the early morning light would be hitting Shearness Pool. I spotted a group of marsh grasses and thought they might offer some neat photographic opportunities. It was pretty windy yesterday morning – so the grasses were continually moving. As the golden light lit them up, they looked to be dancing the early morning light and wind.

As I photographed the marsh grasses, I heard a red winged black bird nearby. In the morning at Bombay Hook there is a wonderful peaceful silence – broken only by the sound of the birds as the new day in the marsh begins –  geese taking flight in large numbers, ducks and swans on the pond, songbirds starting their sounds.

After sunrise, Bill and I headed back into town for breakfast and then returned to Bombay Hook to do some exploring. We saw lots of birds as we drove around the refuge, including some spectacular bald eagles soaring through the trees. At the pond just before the Allee House I photographed a few additional marsh grasses. By then, the sun was much higher in the sky so the grasses appeared to be light tan and white. What I loved was the contrast of the light colors of the marsh grasses against the deep blues and blacks of the water in the pond.

Bombay Hook NWR is a wonderful place to photograph. I’m looking forward to visiting it in the spring when the marsh and woodland wildflowers will be in bloom. My guess is that it will be spectacular.