Maryland Photographs

Maryland
from Bob Cantor's National Parks Photo Gallery

Maryland has no National Parks, but it does have a number of areas run by the National Park Service. See also Great Falls Park and Assateague Island National Seashore.

The Bayview-Butterfly trail at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, a thistle on the trail, and a BaldEagle.

The scenic drive at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge (this is actually in Delaware, on the Delaware Bay, but it's very close to Maryland).
Inside the fort at Fort Washington Park. On the Potomac River just south of Washington, this is run by the National Park Service.
The Patuxent Research Refuge, near Laurel, is run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Here we see a Kestrel in a demonstration at the visitor center and an immature male Orchard Oriole fighting a "rival" in the parking lot.
Fifi the Homecoming Queen at the annual Kinetic Sculpture Race in Baltimore. Also Tic Tock The Croc and Rainbow Fish with Guppy.

This lion guards the Baltimore Museum of Art.
An Osprey delivers dinner at Patuxent River Park. The park naturalist let us get up close and personal with the Osprey chicks.
New Year's Day view from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain.
A horde of periodic cicadas emerges from the ground once every 17 years. Here's a discarded exoskeleton and a cicada fresh from shedding.

Tulips, more Tulips, and a park bench at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton Regional Park, and Orchids in the Conservatory.

Wildlife at Brookside Gardens: a bee in a Tahitian Sunset Rose, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, a Barn Swallow, and a Cardinal.

Flights of Fancy at Brookside Gardens is a butterfly room open for about half the year. Here we have a Blue Morpho open and closed, an Emerald Swallowtail, and a close-up of a Blue Clipper.

The National Capital Dahlia Society Trial Garden is small but beautiful when the dahlias are in bloom.

These pictures from my garden included a Painted Lady butterfly on Zinnias, a Monarch Butterfly (which my wife and I raised from an egg), a Skipper, and a Wool Carder Bee.

Still in my garden, an American Goldfinch, a Hoverfly, and a Sweat Bee gathering pollen on a Purple Coneflower.

Butterflies at the local storm water management ponds include a Variegated Fritillary, a Comma Butterfly, a Common Checkered Skipper, an Eastern Tailed-Blue, a Buckeye, and a Pearl Crescent Butterfly.

Dragonflies and damselflies seen at the ponds: Black Saddlebags Dragonfly, Blue-tailed Damselfly, Familiar Bluet, Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly, and Twelve-spotted Skimmer

Other insects seen there: Carolinian Elegant Fly, Smartweed Caterpillar, and Hoverfly

some birds: a Great Egret, a Black-crowned Night Heron, a Turkey Vulture, a Killdeer, and a Black Vulture.

and a Great Blue Heron who regularly visits the the ponds any time of the year.