The brown pelican of yesterdays post was intentionally ethereal and ghostlike. So I thought today that I would post a more typical image of the Atlantic Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). This bird is a giant despite being the smallest species of pelican. Mature individuals measure one to one and a half meters in length and have wingspans of two to two and a third meters. And in follow-up to yesterday’s poem, it is a misconception that pelicans store food in their gular pouches or sacs. They do not.

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

Another impressive bird of Southern Florida is the limpkin (Aramus guarauna). I encountered this one in Fort Myers at the Six Mile Cypress Slough. Now that I am returned to birding in the Northeast, I am even more impressed with the diversity and the density of Florida wildlife and this despite the very obvious decline of both. It is a very gnawing sadness.

“Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design.”

A.D Hope Death of the Bird

In the wildlife refuges of Southwest Florida everyone is looking for the colorful Roseate Spoonbills (Platalea ajaja). It’s almost an obsession. They always seem to be either hidden behind trees or somehere off in the distance, as if they are challenging you to get a good photograph. I find them, as I think Figure 1 taken at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge indicates, kind of clumsy fliers – seen here crashing into the trees because of its huge wingspan.

When I first got interested in birds some fifty or more years ago, like everyone else i had my Perdersen field guide and was always fascinated by the couple of plates labeled “Florida Specialities.” Perhaps chief speciality among these was the anhinga (Anhinga anhinga). Admittedly this “snake bird,” much like a cormorrant, has been reported as far north as Wisconsin, Pennsylvannia, and New York. It is a star in the everglades where it can often be found lazily spreading and drying its wings in the sunshine. Here is my favorite capture of the trip photographed on a rainy day in the Everglades at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge.

About ten years ago I posted about the Hand of God Nebula and the general concept of Pareidolia, things that look like something else. I think that people have different abilities to see these things, and maybe it is a form of mental illness. This morning, I was going through this past winter’s photographs and came upon the image of Figure 1, snow in the branches of a giant pine outside my bedroom window.

To my eyes, it is filled with the heads of giant snow elephants, complete with ears, eyes, and slightly shortened trunks. We may even argue, based on the ear size, whether they are African or Indian elephants. Do you see them?

The other “night heron” in Southwest Florida is the Yellow-crowned (Nyctanassa violacea). The subject of Figure 1 was photographed at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island.

As a New England birder, I am always delighted by the herons. Our marshes are dominated by the Great Blue Heron. But Southwest Florida, wow! And one of the favorites is the black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). The name leads one to wonder why it and its relatives are called “night herons,” and the answer is an obvious one. They are pretty sedentary during the day but active from dusk to dawn feeding on pretty much everything that wiggles.

The black-crowned of Figure 1 was photographed in a mangrove at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island in January. The distinctive red eye seems all so knowing, or is it the effect of endlessly and sleeplessly burning the midnight oil?