The pelicans, both West and East coast, are always fun to photograph, and I love it when they engage me with their eyes. I photographed this Atlantic brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis), complete with little Mohawk, at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Florida. He was swimming in the shadows when he spotted me and started swimming towards me. I liked the eerie bluish shadows that the shade trees caused – very ghost-like and other worldly. Like the white, ibis whom I recently posted about, he clearly has his eye on me, in this case I think curious. But perhaps I feed my ego and he is merely indifferent.

A wonderful
bird is a pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.

Dixon Lanier Merritt