It is an area steeped with the early history of our nation…. where they still celebrate the birthday of  Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America.  On summer evenings, the country’s longest running outdoor pageant reenacts the failed attempt  of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585 to establish the first permanent English colony in the new world.   The fate of those early settlers remains a mystery and they are known in history books as The Lost Colony.

Neither time, tourism, nor hurricanes have destroyed the charm, history, and hospitality of the town of Manteo.  There are excellent restaurants,  delightful inns, replicas of early sailing ships, Elizabethan gardens, and a wonderful local bookstore with comfortable sitting niches and a cat named Book.   

Although the actor Andy Griffith was born in Mount Airy (325 miles away) he came to Roanoke Island during his college years in Chapel Hill at UNC and began his acting career during the summer as a soldier in The Lost Colony pageant.   He liked the area enough to maintain a home in Manteo during his acting career and he and his wife now reside in a 70-acre compound there full time.

BroJoe travels to Manteo often.  He had his camera along last week and captured these photos of the setting sun.

A lone walker . . . .

Hello, moon. . . .

There are seven species of pelicans in the world and all of them are white except for one–the brown pelican.   It is the only species that dives from the air into the water to catch its fish.

It takes an impressive wing span to keep that body aloft.  They weigh about 30 pounds.

Does this look like something prehistoric?  Since they’ve been around about 40,000,000 years, they qualify!  Their numbers have varied greatly through the years.  DDT imperiled them, as did the popularity of their feathers for women’s hats.

Brown pelicans became the poster child of the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  They had just been taken off the endangered species list the year before.  They still face many perils–loss of habitat and danger from sports equipment like hooks and filament lines.    Estimates are that as many as 80% of brown pelicans have been injured from fishing equipment and some 500 birds a year die from these injuries.

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican. (or belly can)
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the helican. (or hell he can)

I suspect that coffee is brewing somewhere nearby.

Watch the gold spread.

The nights are nice, but you must be there in daylight to see shorebirds like the ones BroJoe shares here.