Month: March 2024

It’s the way of Pelicans, I guess, both Brown Pelicans like this one and American White Pelicans like the one I posted in November of last year (click here). They scoop fish into their large pouches, maneuvering their catch so that it will slip down their gullets, not an easy task as it turns out. The fish are still alive and thrash about in an effort to free themselves as the pelicans gulp and stretch their necks. Sometimes, as in the case of this pelican and this fish, the fish doesn’t succumb immediately once swallowed. The stomach thrashing apparently was bothersome enough to this Brown Pelican that after a few gagging gestures, up came the fish that continued flapping about in the Pelican’s pouch. This image shows the second visit the fish made to the Pelucan’s pouch, still thrashing. It must have calmed down soon after swallowing it a second time because the Pelican resumed fishing and leaping in to catch its prey.

A mature Brown Pelican launches from a jetty in Grand Isle, LA preparing to dive into the water to snatch a fish. We watched this Pelican from a fishing pier as it perched on the riprap jetty watching the water for fish. Its head turned from left to right to left in its effort to spot its next meal. More often than not, it emerged with a full pouch, the fish still wriggling inside. It was a great way to end the day, watching Louisiana’s State Bird in action.

I left Grand Isle, Louisiana Friday morning with torrential rains and lightning. I arrived in California Friday evening to heavy rains and lightning and with predictions of a fierce storm this weekend. Since my fence is already down, I didn’t worry about that happening again but I worried about all the spring flowers that have emerged, fearing they’d be torn to shreds. So far, my new garden is still flourishing. The blooms on the saucer magnolia are mostly gone but there are more daffodils than when I left, a few iris, and the best of all, the dwarf peach tree off my patio is coming into full bloom. To me, that’s peachy keen!

Watching the Willets on a Grand Isle beach was captivating. They would shove their beaks into the shallow surf and emerge with a creature that looked to be something between a slug and a shrimp. I watched this Willet flip its captured delicacy around and each time it clamped down on it, the creature squirted.

Question: “What is black and white and ‘red’ all over? Answer: A huge flock of Black Skimmers. Close to a thousand of these birds were avoiding the strong winds that limited most bird activity here yesterday so they took shelter on the parking lot of a vacant marina in Grand Isle, LA. Seeing this sea of black, white, and red reminded me of that old “Dad” joke, told often by my own Dad. The original answer to the question was “a newspaper” but that probably makes no sense to younger generations what with the disappearance of most traditional newspapers. In fact, I have to admit that when I first heard my Dad tell this joke, I was quite young and didn’t understand the nuanced pun (“red” vs. “read”) and puzzled over the answer for the longest time. If my Dad had told me back then that the answer was “a huge flock of Black Skimmers” and showed me this photograph, it would have made perfect sense to me and I wouldn’t have puzzled over it at all. At the time, I recall thinking that newspapers were only black and white and there was no red in them. I’m certain my initial misunderstanding that the joke was about color instead of a play on words, is why that tired old Dad joke comes to mind whenever I see black, white, and red together even after all these decades.