A study in Brown Pelicans for you today. I love watching them skim along the shore, and I thought Gregg's sister's photographs were fabulous.
Here are some facts about them.
Brown pelicans are the only
species to dive into the water from 9 m (30 ft) above to capture prey. After
catching the prey and a lot of water, they tip their bill downward to drain the
water before swallowing the fish.
While brown pelicans are known for diving, they will never be deep
divers due to the extensive system of subcutaneous air-sacs that give them
their buoyancy in the water.
The pelican's pouch (gular pouch) is used as a dip net to catch
fish, which are soon swallowed into the stomach (the center of gravity) so that
they can maintain their balance while flying.
They have an extendable sac of skin at the base of their throat,
which is capable of holding up to 11 liters (3 gallons) of water, several times
more than their belly.
Most fossil species of pelican are placed in the same genus as the
modern pelican due to extreme anatomical similarities. This suggests that the
present form of pelican has changed very little over the past 30 to 40 million
years.
The brown pelican, the smallest of the Pelecanidae family, can fly
up to 48 kph (30 mph).
Its gular pouch may be used to disperse heat as well as to collect
fish and rainwater.
Brown pelicans are best adapted to living alongside humans. They
are frequently seen at fishing ports up and down the coast, opportunistically
feeding on fish scraps discarded by fisherman.
I bring you these photos with thanks again to my sister-in-law. Thanks for looking and enjoy the rest of your week.
We were at the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, link here.
A lot of the birds are wild and tend to fly into the park in droves when it is feeding time for the resident birds.
One of the ladies who worked there told me this, as I watched her throw fish from a big bucket to the resident birds. She was mostly accurate but if a bird was too slow and her aim was an inch off and splashed into the water, one of the happy visitors was able to grab a morsel or two.
The American White Pelican is indigenous to North America, but the earliest pelican fossil on record is 30 million years' old when a skull was found in France.
The bump on its beak appears on both male and female pelicans during breeding season, but once breeding season is over it disappears. Their breeding season lasts from late March to early May.
My post today is going back several years, so any frame of reference I have about this place, has probably changed quite a lot. The website is still current, however, and you can visit here.
I went back five years for these photos and chose Pelicans. We found lots of them on our vacation in Florida. These were taken at the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center (link above in red) in Tavernia, just south of Key Largo. On five-and-a-half acres you will find an ever-changing population of hawks, spoonbills, pelicans, egrets, herons, merlins, pigeons and others needing help. The center's mission, after treating them, is to have the birds return to the wild.
A narrow boardwalk leading from the visitors center ends up on the water and is lined with large enclosures housing the birds, but as you look around you will see many who just 'hang out'. It is a great bird watching experience.
The following photos were taken in Sebastian, which is located approximately midway on the east coast of the Florida Peninsula between Melbourne and Vero Beach, in an area known as the Treasure Coast. It is recognized as the home of Pelican Island, the first designated wildlife refuge in the United States. The island was the reason why we chose our visit to Sebastian, which was a beautiful little town and one we would like to visit again.
If you look closely you will see pelicans sitting on top of a couple of those posts.
We booked a couple of seats on one of the local tour boats that took us over to the island.
More than 30 species of birds use the area as a rookery, roost and feeding area. In addition 16 species of birds nest at the refuges. The objective of The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is to protect the historic rookery and to provide habitat for migrating birds and threatened and endangered species.
We started the day off by having a lovely walk along the beach. The weather couldn't have been more perfect for a Labor Day Weekend. Hurricane Irma was on everyone's mind and the weather channel was on for a lot of the time when we were all back at the house.
Even for a holiday weekend there weren't a lot of people on this particular beach. Most of the crowds have gone home now that school has started. It was like this all week.
A selfie taken with the sun behind us, and outstretched arms holding camera showing in the reflection of the sunglasses. I wish I could say this was my artsy shot but not really.
The photo below shows the top of the house that Gregg's sister and her husband rented for the week. It was very pretty inside. I will share some of the nicknack photos I took in a future post.
I was told the grasses growing on the top of the dunes were called Sea Oats.
The night before our brother-in-law's brother and his wife asked us if we would like to go with them on a tour to see the wild mustangs which are famous in this area. We happily accepted their invitation.
The next day we drove to the tour company where we hopped onto a multi-seated hummer, which drives along the beach as well as on a few sandy, non-paved residential roads, anywhere the horses tend to go.
You could not drive in the reserve without a four-wheel drive and those big, wide tires.
To get to our seats which were at the back, and after climbing up a step ladder to actually get on the hummer, on our side we had to climb over three rows of seats, which included that of the driver. Thankfully they had been laid flat. I wish someone had been filming us, or maybe not. It would have fitted well into a comedy routine.
We drove towards the reserve and eventually found ourselves on the beach with other Labor Day beach goers, all parked in the middle of the wide sand.
Four-legged beach goers too.
We were hoping to see some horses on the beach but they were probably hiding from all the tourists.
We eventually found a few of them in the residential areas.
Through DNA testing these beautiful animals have been proven to be the descendents of the Spanish mustangs brought to the New World by explorers and colonists, as long ago as the early 1500s. There were also many shipwrecks along this coast and it is thought that when those ships hit the rocks, many horses were able to swim to shore. You can read about one shipwreck in an article here, which I found very interesting.
Several horses were happily munching grasses in people's gardens. The driver told us that they also like to rest in the shade of car ports...
and constant companions seemed to be the cattle egrets.
I will have another post in the near future. I took a load of photos, too many to share today.
We had a fun time driving back along the beach again. In this short video you will see a hummer nearer the waves. This was from the same company and identical to the vehicle we were riding in. If the video doesn't show, you can see it on YouTube here.
At the end of our ride and just before we exited the reserve, we saw this lovely sight.
Pelican Grand Central
I can highly recommend Wild Horse Adventure Tours. Our guide was a wealth of knowledge not only about the horses but about the area also. I am having trouble remembering his name but Gregg thinks it was Charlie. He only did the tours part-time and he was a grandpa. Charlie was great but if you look on Yelp you will see that there are many positive reviews about the tour guides. They have a Facebook page which you can see here. There are very nice aerial views at the top of their page. It gives you a great feel of what you will experience if you are in the area.
In the evening we went to the celebration I mentioned in my first post, and this little cutie was one of the guests. More on that next time.
