State guide

Delaware Nature Guide

Delaware is small, low, and almost entirely coastal-plain — a single great wedge of Atlantic flyway shoreline where the Delaware Bay marshes, the Atlantic beaches, and a sliver of rolling Piedmont above Wilmington meet. That position gives a state of barely two thousand square miles outsized importance to migratory birds: Bombay Hook and Prime Hook hold tens of thousands of wintering Snow Geese and ducks, and each May the Delaware Bay shore stages the globally significant gathering of Red Knots and shorebirds gorging on spawning horseshoe-crab eggs. Spanning a mild USDA zone 7a to 7b, with humid summers and short, rarely brutal winters, the First State packs an unusually long growing season and a rich, water-dominated natural calendar into its modest footprint.