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Poor doggie – we have ducks and geese on the lake behind my house and they come up from the lake and walk on the sidewalks and through peoples yards. When I first moved to FL I had to break my dog of trying to get one of them while we were out walking and that was not an easy feat he was very stubborn about it.
I think it’s ironic. We (people) have been destroying their habitat and filling in their wetlands for the last 50 years- especially dramatically in developing suburbs, and then people complain about having them around. 😆 They are running out of places to go, and are learning that live around humans might just have to replace their original habitat that the new Walmart or Starbucks parking lot is sitting on. 😉
Same thing with deer in some places. I understand the frustration of having your plants eaten by deer (alas I understand it too well sometimes, my poor plants), but I find myself less sympathetic to those that are building new houses in the ‘burbs and outlaying areas. OF course the deer is going to eat your flowers… your house is sitting on where he used to graze! 😉
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My art: featherdust.comThe same thing is happening with coyotes in San Francisco. People feed them, then the coyotes get bolder and start to explore, and then people complain about them and kill them. I also heard of a gator problem in Florida when houses were built on gator habitats. The gators would come back and be killed. Sad. 🙁
Speaking of pelicans, I had a few visit the lake next to our house! I guess they only come one day a year to our lake (according to the neighbor) and I managed to get a couple shots of them, although by the time I left the house to take the pictures, they were on the other side of the lake, so the pictures aren’t very good! I was so excited!
Oh gosh, the pelican. That was almost a comic act. I was still living in the middle of the Mojave Desert at that time: not exactly the place you’d expect to find a sea bird. The town was tucked up against the east side of the Sierras. We’d just gotten through a really bad winter storm, with high winds slicing across the Central Valley and over the Sierras. Apparently it pushed a flock of migrating white pelicans well off-course. The poor things were trying to continue their migration, flying along the east face of the mountains. Unfortunately, that day the military base had F-18 jets doing maneuvers in the same area. As one of the jets was making his turn along the Sierras, he discovered giant white birds travelling at his altitude. There was a zero-range encounter. The jet blew out one engine on pelican bits; the pilot somehow managed to bring his jet back to base. Meanwhile, a few people in the town below discovered large, angry birds crash-landing in their backyards.
Our workplace was the sole wildlife care facility in the entire valley. We sometimes get baby pigeons turned in as “baby pelicans” (the locals aren’t very familiar with water birds). So when the guy came in saying he had a pelican in his truck, I went out expecting to see the usual small Priority Mail box on the seat. Nope. In the truck bed was a large rabbit hutch, with a huge white bird in it. As we approached, it snapped its beak warningly. With the aid of a queen-sized comforter, we brought the bird inside and checked it over. It had a bruised left wingtip and some missing flight feathers, but otherwise seemed unharmed: it just couldn’t get back into the air with that injured wingtip.
The bird was feisty. It was in full breeding plumage, complete with the big fin on top of its bill. That bird clearly had had plans for the weekend, and an enforced layover in the desert did not please it one bit. We telephoned frantically around and finally found a watefowl care facility on the coast that was willing to send someone to transport the bird. But it was late in the day; she couldn’t get there until the middle of the next day. We’d need to at least feed this bird, and try to keep it comfortable.
Thankfully it was winter, and the temperatures were cool. We installed the pelican in an outdoor dog run made of concrete block with a tin roof. As we yanked the comforter free and slammed the gate shut, the bird blew up: flapping, stamping his big webbed feet, and snaking that very long neck up at our faces with loud snaps of his twenty-four-inch-long bill. His reach was such that the hooked tip of his bill was slamming shut right at chin level. Clearly, this bird has some issues to work out with the human race. Feeling sorry for him on that hard concrete, I tossed a bath towel in for him to stand on. He was beating the holy crud out of it when I left.
The next morning, we had to feed him. Problem: No live bait shops in Ridgecrest. The nearest one was up at the lake, nearly an hour away. We sent someone over to the supermarket instead for twenty bucks’ worth of lovely rainbow trout, with the heads on. We also had some antibiotic tablets to stuff into the fish, thus solving two problems at once. But the bird wasn’t going to take dead fish. Someone had to force-feed him. Guess who.
The pelican was ready, mantling his wings and flapping his pouch warningly. He watched as I shook out my trusty bedspread, muttered a brief prayer, and opened the door. It was kind of like something out of one of the cheesier documentaries on the Coliseum, where the gladiator with the net squares off against the one with the spear. After thirty very active seconds, I ended up with a knee on the bird’s back, the bedspread around his wings, and a death grip on his bill, yelling for fish. One of my intrepid assistants skittered into the run and all but threw me the loaded fish. I opened the bird’s bill and discovered something new: there’s a lot of room in there. Like room enough for my entire arm. I slid the fish down as far as seemed safe, unwrapped the bird, backed up until I was almost to the door, and then let go of his bill and dove out of range. Snap, flap, glare . . . and finally, gulp. If he’d brought that fish back up I was going to scream.
The waterfowl rehabber arrived at last and we got the bird stuffed into the large dog crate that she’d brought. The pelican continued to demonstrate his depth of feeling for the human race by spearing his bill through the air holes in the crate any time somebody came close. We bid him heartfelt goodbyes and the comforter went for a much-needed wash. I got an update about two months later, letting us know that the pelican had recovered beautifully and been released. 🙂
Thank you for the story! I never realized how pelicans look during mating season, or the length of their bills! 😯 I did know they could do some serious damage to someone if they wanted to, though. 😆
It was one of those “we’ll look back on this someday and laugh” experiences, all right! 😆 I’m glad that the bird pulled through: he was quite a fighter! I’d never been that close to a pelican before, and only seen the brown pelicans in the past. They’re marvellous fishers. I’ve sat on a boogieboard and watched them slicing into the water just a hundred yards away: that was really neat.
I’ve seen pelicans fish! Not from that closely, you lucky duck, but from about 200 feet. They all go in at once, too! 😀
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