Hello to the pelican.  Ever given much thought to a pelican?  I hadn’t until watching them from our balcony in Pensacola.  I have watched many birds over time and have marveled at many.   The tiny hummingbird and it’s fast beating wings, along with it’s menacing long beak especially when it’s hovering just a few inches from your eyeball.   Or, the soaring bald eagle with it’s grand black and white distinctive coloring that sets it apart from it’s peers in the sky.  Or maybe even that ever present Canadian goose that craps on the sidewalk and dares you to walk down the path without stepping in it.

I really don’t know much about the life of a pelican.  I guess they are pretty ugly when they are hatched.  I don’t know how they nest or where exactly they spend their nights or even how long they live.   To know would mean I would have to do some research but I don’t want to.   I don’t want to destroy my great admiration for a pelican.

Here is what I mean.  So just think of this a little.  They are a huge bird and they are not a predator like hawks, eagles and ospreys.  But their size commands respect from the rest of the bird world.   You don’t see them being pestered by little birds like you do an eagle or a hawk.  A pelican can settle in with their smaller friends and none of them seem to mind each other.   An eagle flies by and all the small birds chase and attack it without end.  How annoying that would be for the eagle.   Often a pelican comes by and the others all yell out “time for lunch!” As they instinctively know that the pelican has spotted food swimming nearby.  Where you see a pelican, you often see dolphins as well.   Same food.  Same lunch.

Watching a pelican get lunch is kind of baffling to me.  Sometimes they just land on the water, swim around and dip their heads in to grab a quick snack.  Easy-peasy, fresh sushi.  While kind of boring to watch it does seem the best way to eat - in my mind anyway.   Although often you see pelicans do skydiving runs from many feet above the water and crash down upon a fish just under the surface.  Someone once told me that a pelican doesn’t dive in beak first because that would result in their bill opening up and just get a mouthful of water.  They said a pelican actually tucks their bill under their chin and enters the water with the top of their head.  This way they stun the fish with their hard head and then quickly snatch the fish with their bill.   Again, I guess I could do my own research but again I don’t want to wreck my admiration for a pelican, but in my personal observation of thousands of pelican dive bombs, it sure looks to me like they are entering the water bill first.  Anyway, I’ll let that debate go.

Aside from a pretty steady supply of fresh fish I think the best part of being a pelican is the ability to soar to incredible heights with little effort.   Pelicans have huge wings and they don’t seem to flap them very much to get where they are going.   I’ve watched pelicans fix their wings and ride wind currents for hundreds if not thousands of yards.   My favorite is watching a flock of pelicans fly along the seashore.   They have a knack for finding updrafts.  My balcony is south facing so if the wind is from the south, an updraft is created by the buildings along the shore.  Some days the wind is gentle and the pelicans will literally float from building to building and never flap their wings.  Each building creates a gentle updraft where the pelican will gain altitude, maybe only a few feet, which allows the pelican to float slowly downward until it finds the next updraft at the next building.   I’ve witnessed pelicans do this all down the coast until out of sight and never flapped once.

Other times, and this is coolest, the wind is a little stronger (and especially out of the south-east) and this wind runs up against a taller condominium.  This creates a strong updraft on the front of the condo that the pelicans will catch at the lower floors.   To see this is amazing.  The pelicans slowly float towards the condo like they normally do until they are within 20 or 30 feet of the face of the condo.   At that point they will immediately and rapidly soar upwards at dozens of feet per second, often going from 40 feet in the air to 300, 400, 500 feet or more in a matter of seconds.   They ride this updraft in a circulating (usually) counterclockwise motion until the entire flock seems to hit a limit where the updraft must weaken.   Once at the peak, the pelicans will slowly float further down the coast until reaching the next tall condo and do it all over again.  Like I said this is amazing to watch.  Such a sense of effortless freedom.   If I were a pelican I think that’s what I would live for.  Maybe soar as high as I could.  I don’t know how high a pelican can fly but I would take to the max and float endlessly downward back to my home.  Probably an experience that mimics parachuting or paragliding for humans.

Yes, a pelican is now my favorite bird.   Whether I was created by God, or this is really a simulation, or life is purely by the chance of mother nature, I would love to be a pelican someday.