A Day At The Beach

Today we got to see first hand when a juvenile “ages out of the system”. A small band of horse were taking advantage of the strong and much cooler northeasterly breezes on the beach. Three pinto mares were lounging in the sand while their stallion, a beautiful deep Mahogany Bay, stood watch over them a couple of feet away. Much further off, a couple hundred feet or so, stood a much younger stallion who I estimated to be about 2 years old. While he’s not a mature breeding animal ready to have his own band of mares, he is too old and no longer tolerated in the family group. The band stallion, probably his father, has decided he can no longer hang with the “family”. Talk about tough love. Now the youngster have a one to two year period of being on the fringe. Most likely he will get together with age mates in the same predicament and when the time is right, he will steal a mare or two and form his own breeding herd. Sometimes he will fight for those mares. Later in the day, we observed another band on the beach enjoying the brisk breeze while the surf swirled around their legs. What caught my eye in this band was a palomino mare, not rare but also not as common as the more prevalent bays, chestnuts and pintos.

Just before supper we started out for a drive to see if we could discover any other bands in the area. Sometimes it’s difficult to believe there are more than 100 horses on the Maryland end of the island with none in sight and at other times, you almost drive into them. We left our site, drove no more than 50 feet and there they were, munching on the thick grass in the campground. And sure enough, it was the “Palomino” band from earlier in the day.

Each evening we drive the park roads in their entirety. That sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Well, there are about 5 miles of roads on this end of the island. We drive this loop a couple of times each day in search of ponies. Towards the end of tonight’s loop, we spotted a band of 6 members feeding on the thick cord grass growing on the marshlands. I had an up close experience with the stallion of this band who was grazing nearest the road. He crossed the course sand no more than 5 feet from me and even though they are pony size in stature, every inch of him looked horse to me. Even their knickers to one another are deep and throaty. We found a roosting tree of egrets but the sun was low in the sky so I wasn’t able to do justice to this majestic sight. After a short drive off the island to find a postal box to mail cards, we were back at the same marshy area when a second band of ponies which included the cream and white pinto mare arrived. Knowing two stallions cannot abide one another for very long, I suspected there might be fireworks. The mares milled together for a short while, some even seemed to be greeting old friends but just moments later, the stallions came nose to nose. There were sharp squeals, one showed his teeth and the other showed his heels. The late arriving band showing good sense, left the field, and it was all over. I never considered myself as “that person” who goes to a NASCAR race to see a wreck, or in this case, watches as two stallions fight over grazing rights. But there I was feeling disappointed when it was over that quickly.