Visit the kelpforest....

Interesting...I posted a while ago about a pelican on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, and only now stumbled across a February posting from the International Bird Rescue Research Center - they have a center in San Pedro, up the hill from the docks - that might explain some of the weird things pelicans were doing last winter.

California Brown Pelicans in distress: Event update


That's generally how I find things, I forget I was looking for them and then trip over them, months later...

Did my once-a-month dock stint this morning. I always want to capture the pelicans in their breeding colors (totally white/yellow head) but I always seem to get there when their brown summer neck feathers are growing back in. This guy at least still had his (or her, they look the same) yellow head feathers and red beak/gular pouch colors.

Municipal (Fish) Markets
San Pedro CA
Casio Exilim EX-Z80A
13 February 2009

( a couple more, and other kid's parents put me to shame... )

Something I forgot to write about.

One afternoon over the weekend, Gareth came in from the front yard and said, "Mom there's a pelican on the sidewalk."

Now I should know not to just dismiss what he says out of hand, especially after the 'possum incident, but we were getting ready to head to the store, and I was busy haranguing everyone to get their shoes on and get ready to go, so I just kind of said, "Right, ok..." and continued collecting shoes etc. I doubted it was a pelican; we do live a mile from the beach, but you seldom see pelicans away from the water, and certainly not in a residential neighborhood. We see cormorants fly overhead quite often, but not pelicans.

We walked outside to get in the car, and directly across the street was a police car, pulled in at an angle to curb, with the yellow lights on its light bar blinking. Cops in our neighborhood are not really unusual; we live a block away from the police station and they often park on our street to do their paperwork before heading in. This officer, however, was standing on the sidewalk, looking at something further up. And I could have sworn, as he stood there, that I saw him reach up to his holstered pistol and unsnap the strap over it. This made me a bit nervous, and instead of driving past him, I elected to make a U-turn from my parking space and go the other direction. As I did, I had clear view up the sidewalk where the policeman was looking.

And there, indeed, stood a juvenile pelican. Brown head and back, white belly. I really should believe Gareth now, when he tells me these things.

As we went out to Main Street and passed the police station, I saw an Animal Contral truck exiting the police parking lot; I'll bet it was on the way to pick the bird up. There has been some sicko recently deliberately breaking the wings of pelicans off Bolsa Chica, close to here, and I wonder if this bird was injured; however, there have been a lot of hungry young birds recently struggling to find food recently as well - the linked blog cites young birds also being found in unexpected places searching for food, a bit farther down.

Still, I wonder what the officer unstrapping his gun thought the pelican was going to do? They can't bite (very hard, anyway), and their long beaks are too unwieldy to even peck very efficiently - that's not what they're designed for. They might buffet you with their wings a bit, I suppose, but I don't think they could really injure you. They might damage you if they dive bombed you from straight overhead, but they not going to attack from the ground.