Exploring Cape Henlopen (Again)

Exploring DelawareWildlife PhotographyLandscape Photography

Jan 5

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season and are ready to rock and roll in the new year!

As we get back into the Adventure Blog with this first post of the year, I decided to go with another post about exploring Cape Henlopen - also known as The Point - in Lewes. This time last year, I did a similar post about it, but after a recent walk around the cape, decided to go back and revisit it. Not only is this one of the coolest environments in Coastal Delaware, but it also one of my favorite places to walk/hike in the off-season.

For those who don’t know, Cape Henlopen stretches north along the Atlantic coast, and wraps around into the Delaware Bay. If you go to walk it, I believe it is somewhere between one and one-and-a-half miles long to go from the bayside access around to the oceanside access (which can be seen here in the image to the left).

Every time I walk the Point, I am always amazed at what I see - and I typically try to stagger the time of day I do it for that same reason. I also try to make sure I do the walk shortly after it opens in the fall (the oceanside portion, anyway, as the bayside stays closed about a month or so longer than the oceanside to allow endangered beach nesting birds ample time before starting their southern migration), and then a few times over the course of the winter months as well. Doing the walks at different times of day and during different seasons/weather conditions increases the amount of wildlife you can see on the walks - in the late fall, you can potentially spot piping plovers, black skimmers, and other beach nesting birds, while the winter months bring eagles, peregrine falcons, and in some rare cases snowy owls (though I personally have never been fortunate enough to spot one myself).

My Most Recent Hike

The last time I ventured out to make the hike was a day or two after Christmas 2024. I had some down time from my real estate photography, as I wanted to take some time off around the holidays, so I headed out one morning to see what I could find.

Normally when I do this hike, I only take my camera and one lens (generally my Sigma 150 - 600 mm telephoto), but this time I opted to take my whole bag so I could change lenses if I wanted. This proved to be quite worthwhile, as I was able to capture wider landscapes with my other lenses, while the telephoto granted me the opportunity to get a few wildlife shots of some ducks. The longer zoom lens also let me get some new shots of the Harbor of Refuge and East End Lighthouse from the beach.

In general, it was a pretty slow day for wildlife sightings that day, though. There were a few surf scoters off the oceanside, but then nothing until I got over to the bayside and spotted some sanderlings and gulls. The surf scoters proved to be a great find, though, as I was treated to one of them raising up out of the water and stretching its wings - fortunately for me, I was quick enough to get my camera up and snap a few images of this before it proceeded to fly off.

The sanderlings proved to be less cooperative, though, and I was unable to get any good photos of them, while the gulls just weren’t in any good positions.
My final wildlife sighting happened unintentionally - there was a pair of bald eagles perched atop the concrete storage building by the East End Lighthouse that I only noticed after I took a photo of the lighthouse. I tried to zoom in and get a good shot of the birds, but even at 600mm it proved to be just a little too far off to get anything worthwhile.

The Lighthouses

Of course, no walk around Cape Henlopen would be complete without snapping a few shots of the two lighthouses like I mentioned earlier.

It seems no matter how many times I photograph the lighthouses, I always find myself going back and taking more pictures of them. They are such iconic landmarks in Lewes, so how could I not?

On this particular walk, I was fortunate with the timing as the Cape May - Lewes Ferry was on its first crossing of the day, coming over from New Jersey. This, along with my location on the Cape at the time, allowed me a cool perspective of the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse with the Ferry off in the distance - seen in the image to the left.

By the time I got around and was in position to work with the East End Lighthouse, the sun had finished coming up. Despite this, I found an angle close to the tip of the Cape where some small dunes framed the lighthouse really nicely. Of course, I did also get a photo or two where, as mentioned earlier, I spotted some eagles out by it as well. Though they serve as just a small detail in those images, they are definitely a welcome one - if you look really closely at the image below, you can see them if you look for their namesake white heads!