The bleached, clean skull of the young mare stuck in my mind since I first saw it the day we stepped off Grit and onto the Shackleford island. I wanted to have it, but it belonged to the ponies and to the island. Besides that, and rightly so, it is illegal to take the bones off the island.

I wanted to go back and see it again. Get more of the story it could tell of the being it had once served. I wanted to feel its smooth, weathered feel. I wanted to run my fingers over the teeth, feel the points and the wear they had endured in life.

I wanted to look again at the stages of the molars, which had helped me guess at the age at death of about 3.5 -4 years old. I wanted to look again at the pointy, little wolf tooth next to the first cheek tooth on the upper left side. I wanted to check again that there were no canines present, which would have made me think it might have been the skull of a stallion instead of a mare. I wanted to feel the weight of the mandible. I wished to observe again the fine, long vomer bone and the delicate lace-like ethmoturbinates that are so important for olfaction.

I wanted to look again at the suture lines that make up each of the distinct plates of the skull. I have studied equine craniosacral, and we memorize these sutures so we can lay our hands on them on live horses to influence their minute movements and help them heal.

We traced our steps back to the skull for a second look. It was, unsurprisingly, right where we had last seen it two days before. I felt it, turned it over and ran my hands over the plates and teeth. I admired its beauty and feel. I counted and named the teeth, incisors, wolf, premolars and molars. I thought about the being it had belonged to.

I was just finishing photographing and handling it when Bernie noticed a little spider hiding just inside the upper right cheek tooth. Bernie zoomed in on his iPhone camera and took a photo. Then he took his fingers to the phone and spread them to enlarge his photo. The spider that had been going for a rather eventful joyride in my hands was a black widow.

With all the observing I was doing. This was not a great thing to have missed, but at least no harm had come to the spider or me. I put her skull back where I had found it, making sure it was in the same orientation it had been in when I picked it up, in case that mattered to her and thanked her under my breath for not having bitten me.

What a mess being bitten by the skull's guardian could have been in the late afternoon alone on Shackleford Banks in March, here by sailboat, not another soul around but me and Bernie. I don’t think many people actually die from black widow bites, but it was an experience I am glad I got to miss, although it would have added to the drama of this fantastic adventure we are having out here on Shackelford Banks among the wild ponies, both the living and the dead.

What a trip it's been. A true experience doesn't come without the harder moments as well as the highs. We've been blessed with very few other people on the island, mostly none and no flies. We have also ridden out one lee shore gale with gusts right at 40 knots, which blew its heart out for 24 hours. We ran into Beaufort to escape a second one.

Tomorrow, we will head back out to Shackleford to keep studying the pony bands we find. We left our beautiful anchorage a quarter of a mile east of the west end to go see what the far east end of the island looked like. It was a windy place while we were there, and quite a paddle to the shore.

The ponies we did see on our trip to the east end shore seemed more vigilant than the ones on the west side. They would quietly tuck in to the treeline when they saw us even though we were quite far away from them. We did not have much time to explore this part of the island or to sit and watch the ponies, as we needed to get to Beaufort before the next north-east gale came in.

Our trip has been amazing so far, full of insights the ponies have shown us. Thanks to Bernie, the cook and captain, the meals have been delicious, and the boats, Grit and the kayaks, have stayed afloat. This, though, has not been an easy task. There have been some hairball moments of dread, including a motor that died on a tide wanting to sweep us into the Graveyard of the Atlantic, a ramming by another boat, an anchor that would not come up, and two sunken kayaks that almost could not be pulled aboard. To read these stories, go to Bernie's site riverearth.com . 

My last post about observing a two stallion-band on the western part of Shackleford Banks can be read here at  twostepway.com.

Below are some photos from the trip so far.

Good night from aboard Grit at Shackleford Banks. Soon I will write more but now it's time to sleep. The ponies made us smile today. The water is now calm. The moon shines. All is well.

My husband Bernie and I have sailed to Shackleford Banks to study the ponies for two weeks. We have been in our anchorage, about a quarter of the way down the island from the West end towards the east, for 5 days now. I am currently sitting in a 24-foot sailboat off Shackleford Banks, NC, riding out the tail end of a gale that came in without warning last night. The winds reached 40 knots at their worst, but today, it was still blowing hard enough that I didn't want to launch a kayak to get to shore to continue observing the ponies. We thought we’d just write instead, but even that has been tough as the boat is jumping around a lot on the anchors.
Watching the wild ones with questions in mind is the best way to learn.

These ponies are amazingly tough and well-regulated. They live in small, very cohesive bands. They have, over many generations of harsh living on this island (400+ years here), developed very zen demeanors. Certainly not shut down or numbed in any way, just chill and ready to respond to whatever the moment brings. If they feel pressure from the weather, they move into the thick, short, live oak forests. If the bugs get too bad in summer, they file along to stand in the breeze on the ocean side.

Much here has made them who they are. They reflect tough. They reflect secure. They reflect steady. They reflect resourcefulness. They have never witnessed an abundance of food. Yet they appear closely bonded and peaceful for the most part.

I wanted to come to Shakleford Banks with a plan for how I would observe these ponies and the kinds of questions I wanted to ask of them.

The first thing I note every day is date, time and location. These things are good to know, as sometimes you start to see patterns in when a band might rest, eat, and drink.

Then I note a general location where I spotted a band. The total population of horses on Shackleford right now is around 102 horses. The horses organize themselves into bands. There are harem bands and bachelor bands. Harem bands are made up of a lead stallion and his mares plus their offspring, and maybe another non-breeding stallion. Harem band size on Shakleford ranges from 2 to 13 members.

Most bands are smaller. The non-breeding bands, mostly made up of young and non-breeding stallions, are called bachelor bands. Some of the harem bands have established territories that the stallions actively manage with dung piles and also defend from other stallions.

Other researchers have noted that harem stallions in the western part of the island share territories, while those in the middle and on the East tend to defend their own territories. This is primarily due to the flatter topography and better grazing in the eastern and middle parts of the island. The density of horses is also greater in the middle and on the east end than it is on the West side. In all, there are 25 harem bands and 7 bachelor bands currently on Shakleford.

The next thing I do is identify the bands I see by noting the number of band members and the type (harem or bachelor). Then I describe each member that make it up. I note sex, general age, like yearling, younger horse, mature adult and older horse. I also note the facial and leg markings for identification. I describe the stallion in as much detail as I can. Sometimes mares or young horses leave their band, but the stallion always stays until he is defeated by another stallion, which does not happen very much on Shakleford. That’s why it’s important to identify the stallions really well. For wild horses, these horses do not seem to challenge each other as much as some other wild herds do, so the band members are usually fairly stable.
The mares that have been sterilized with the PZP vaccine tend to change bands more than others, but not that often. Last year, 11 mares on Shakleford were darted with the PZP vaccine. This should keep them from having foals for the next 1-3 years. This is necessary to help manage the carrying capacity of the island and to keep too many ponies from starving due to a lack of available nutrition.

I also use the Henneke Body Condition Score to describe each band member’s condition. A 1 is very emaciated, where you can clearly see the whole skeletal structure under the coat, to 9, which is obese. With wild horses, you really only ever see scores on the low end, 5 and below. So far, on Shakleford, just coming out of a rather tough winter, we have only seen a high score of about 3.5 on a few stallions. Most of what we have seen is quite thin right now.

I then note the primary activity they are engaged in during my observation. Most of the time, it’s eating, but we've also seen them resting, playing, and nursing. When eating, we are trying to note what it is. The four major types of vegetation the ponies eat on Shakleford are Spartina marsh grass, sea oats, salt meadow cordgrass and centipede grass. They also eat some aquatic plants.

Then I watch for incidents of the two questions I am interested in observing in these horses. One is the behavior around novelty. Novelty, in this case, is anything out of the ordinary that will cause one of the band members to look up and orient. Orienting is when a prey animal assesses its relative safety. I am interested in what this response looks like. What eye or front on view the horse orients to, and what the other band members do in response to his/her behavior. Who orients, and what is the novelty that caused the reaction?

I am also interested in observing how horses seek and receive attention from other herd members, and what they ask for, such as play, grooming, nuzzling, companionship, or close proximity for resting or grazing. I am interested in the eye they approach each other with, as, like humans, horses show eye lateralization preferences based on emotional states.

This is all observational data and will not be made into any kind of empirical study, but it gives me a nice framework for my personal observations and will help me to understand the horses I work with even better, as both attention-getting and seeking, and orientation are very important in the lives of all our horses.

According to the 2025 Annual Report from the Cape Lookout National Seashore, 20 ponies (17% of the herd) died on Shackleford Banks in 2025. This mortality rate was significantly higher than the 6% average from 1999 to 2024. The deaths were primarily due to a lack of available resources for some of the individuals.

Shackleford Banks, being an island, has limited grazing for the population of horses. The National Park Service and the Foundation For Shackleford Horses have a federal mandate to keep the herd between 110-130 individuals at all times.

They do not manage the herd with supplemental feeding or vaccinations. They are allowed to let the numbers fall below 110 individuals if it is due to natural causes and not management culling. There were seven foals born on the island in 2025. One died, and two had to be removed for care and rearing off island as they had somehow come to be separated from their mothers and their bands.

The bands we have seen so far are thin and grazing like crazy on the new grasses sprouting. These are tough ponies, and they have now come through the winter; most of them should be able to start putting on a little weight.

There is a scoring system for horses called the Henneke Body Condition Scoring System, which ranges from 1 to 9. One is extremely emaciated, and nine is extremely fat. The ponies we have seen so far run from about 1.5 to 3.5. A score of 3.5 is thin for a horse.

The interesting thing is that the two stallions we have seen so far are in better condition than the mares, with scores around 3-3.5. The mares we have seen have scores around 1.5-2.8. The two yearlings we saw, also look a little better than the mares, 3-3.5, like the stallions.

We have seen one mare that is still allowing her yearling to nurse a little, which is probably a bit taxing for her at this time of year. The yearling is also eating grass, so a little milk is a few extra calories for him. I read that wild horses, particularly those on Shakleford Banks, allow their foals to nurse for much longer than domestic horses. Yearlings on Shackleford will nurse mostly for social bonding until they are almost two or until their mother has become pregnant again. This prolonged nursing is one of the reasons there are such stable and cohesive bands on Shackleford.

It's a tough place to live. I think of these amazingly tough ponies surviving the storms and cold on this island in winter, almost everything stops growing, the body demands calories to survive the cold, and somehow, they manage. At least the majority do, and have for 400-plus years.

Back to the ones who don’t. We found a pony’s bleached bones remains on our first day on the island. We observed the teeth set in the skull some more to let them tell us a bit of the story. Probably a mare, absence of canine teeth. She was between 3.5 and 4 years old as the last molar was just coming in. I’m guessing she died from what the NPS refers to as “a failure to thrive”. You have to be a strong pony to make it to old age out here, and plenty do. A mare lived to 34 and a stallion to 29. Many others make it into their 20s. These are extraordinary ponies in a majestic, magical yet harsh setting.

more photos and stories at riverearth.com

Second day. Awoke aboard the good vessel Grit. The sun was shining, the water sparkling. Several pelicans flew overhead as I stepped out of the companion way to greet the day and the island. Our red percolator bubbled and steamed. The cabin smelled of rich French roast. Bernie saw a dolphin swim up the channel right next to the boat.
We were planning to paddle to the island and walk east to find some ponies to observe for the day, when Bernie got a text from his friend Keith, who wanted to pick us up in his beautiful classic cruising motorboat and take us out to lunch in Beaufort. There was also a promise of a shower, and even though the offer was sooner than I would have preferred, I knew it would feel great and that we would have a fun visit with Keith.

Keith brought his cute cattle dog, Dulce, with him, and much to her delight, she got her own hot dog sitting right with us at the bar of the Royal James.

On the way back to Grit, Keith’s boat ran gently aground, and Bernie was able to push us off with a long oar. Then, as Keith was leaving Grit, he got stuck on the sand again, as finding the channel in this area is rather tricky. Bernie paddled out in a kayak and got aboard Keith’s boat, and he used the long oar to free up Keith’s boat as Keith steered.

Once we had waved Keith and Dulce off. I got myself organized and paddled over to Shackleford to find some ponies. I followed hoof prints to the edge of a brackish lagoon, where I assumed they had gone to get some water. I then walked up to the top of the nearest tall dune to scout for them. But I saw no ponies, only a tough landscape for ponies to live upon. This gave me a moment's pause to think of their flinty capacity to survive here. Not only the storms, but also the sandy, nutrition-poor landscape. The flies, the wind, the exposure, and yet, supposedly, the stupidity of some tourists is their greatest downfall.

Bernie joined me, and we walked towards the ocean from the bay side. On our way, we found the bleached bones of a deceased pony. The skull was very interesting to look at. The Shackleford ponies have deep jawbones and short muzzles, and the skull showed this feature. I could also clearly see all the skull sutures I had learned studying craniosacral. For those who do not know, a horse’s skull is not one solid bone but made up of different plates that have suture lines between them.

We also passed many stud piles as we walked through the interior, going from the bay to the ocean side. Stud piles are mounds of dung that the stallions make to let other stallions know their territory. Stallions spend a lot of time making them and sniffing them for information.

We got to the ocean, sat down, and drank a beer. No ponies but no people either. So extraordinary to be able to just sit vastly alone together with the long beach, the ocean, the dunes and somewhere close by some of the Shackleford ponies.

On our way back to the boat, we found the same band of ponies we had seen the day before. The old dark bay mare, the chestnut stallion, and the two yearlings. This time, there was also a sun-bleached dark bay mare with them. I do not know where she was the day before, but it now makes sense why we had seen two yearlings. I could not figure out why there were two foals the day before. We watched the dark bay mare nurse her foal. They all grazed.

Then they filed off in the setting sun. We went back to the kayaks in the orange-saturated light and paddled back to Grit. What a beautiful day it was.

Bernie is also posting about our trip to Shackleford. To read his posts go to riverearth.com.

Bernie and I left Oriental, NC yesterday under sail and arrived to our anchor off Shackleford Banks. We arrived at low tide in the late afternoon. As we were figuring out the anchoring we saw our first band of wild ponies stepping from the woods. It was a group of four ponies. They romped a bit, picked up a canter and headed down the beach away from our boat.

Today we launched our kayaks paddled to the island. We tied the kayaks up to some downed trees on the beach and set out to explore with a knapsack containing a lunch of devil ham sandwiches. We walked from the bay side to the ocean.  In between the bay and the ocean are dunes with juniper trees and grass. It's a mix of low forests and grassy dunes. We walked to a high dune near the ocean beach and saw a bunch of dolphins.

Then we walked to another high dune and saw the ponies down below grazing in a little valley of very short grass. There was four of them, a chestnut stallion, a dark bay mare and two yearlings. The mare and the stallion looked thin. They have just come through winter.

Bernie and I watched them graze for a while then we walked back to the bay side and ate our lunch in the shade. After the lunch we walked back to the kayaks and went back to the sailboat for a nap. After napping we rowed back to the island to pitch our tent so we now have a land base as well. Below are some pictures of the trip up till now.