Crossing Poster

On the Eastern Shore of Virginia, USA, each year nearly 1 ½ million visitors come to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Many come to enjoy the long, white sand beach along the Atlantic Ocean. The Refuge is a major attraction for bird watchers, and when the Atlantic Flyway becomes active with migrating birds, Canada geese and snow geese there are 14,000 acres of dunes, marsh and maritime forest where they may put down to feed and rest. But unlike other national parks across the land that serve as a year-round habitat for birds and small animals, the Chincoteague Refuge, actually located on its neighbouring Assateague Island, has some other well-know residents, the famous Chincoteague wild ponies. Most people come to see the ponies each year in late July, with up to 40,000 crowding the small Island for the annual Pony Penning when the foals are auctioned off to raise money for the Island fire company. The ponies, about 150 of them, are divided into two herds on Assateague Island. Unknown to many, they are rounded up three times a year by the equally famous Salt Water Cowboys and herded into corrals where they checked over by their veterinarian and given vaccines and worm medicine. You can read more about Assateague and the ponies on our website, www.wildponytales.info. The ponies are owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company. The photographs we are offering for sale were taken either at recent roundups in the wild by one of the student staff members of the website. The ponies in this photo are crossing a stream on their way into the big corral on Beach Road.