4 June 2014. Hamlton, ON. With a couple of evening hours to myself, I went to see a bunch of American White Pelicans reported to have set down on an island in the harbour. They were there alright, four of them recuperating after a long flight and taking up space in a clamorous colony of Double Crested Cormorants, Ring-billed Gulls and Caspian Terns. The gulls and terns seemed to take exception to the pelicans by occasionally dive bombing them, whether because the pelicans were just out-of-place strangers or suspected to be predators I don’t know. The pelicans didn’t seem to mind terribly although every now and then they made wild jabs of retribution with their long orange beak.
I was somewhat more taken by the colourful masses of Caspian Terns, many of them on their nests, than I was by the pelicans; but the pelicans are certainly interesting and not just because they play such a role in children’s literature. It certainly seems incongruous, pelicans in Canada, but they breed around large lakes across a large part of the continent roughly from Manitoba to Alberta and south to Kansas, they have to get there somehow from their wintering grounds of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast so it’s not a big surprise that a few show up every year maybe blown a little off course.
Here they are in a gallery (which you can’t see in an email, you’ll have to visit the site), Birds of the Day or maybe more appropriately Curiosities of the Day.
Love your shots!