A bird about which God has no regrets

Posted Sunday morning, April 29, 2018.

Brown Pelican diving. Photo by Peter Brannon, Audubon Photography Awards. Courtesy Audubon.

Sometimes, when I let myself half-believe God exists and he created the universe, I think he created the Earth specifically as a home for birds, and we’re an afterthought about which he probably has a few regrets. I’m pretty sure he has no regrets about pelicans.

I’ve never seen a pelican dive but I have seen terns do it and I’ve wondered how they don’t kill themselves. Now I know, at least how brown pelicans manage the trick:

Perhaps you’ve watched, and heard, these large, long-billed birds fishing. They circle high, then dive headfirst, plunging under water to catch fish.

But doesn’t that hurt? Anyone who has taken a belly flop off a diving board knows the powerful force of hitting the water.

Several adaptations protect Brown Pelicans as they dive, sometimes from as high as 60 feet. Air sacs beneath the skin on their breasts act like cushions. Also, while diving, a pelican rotates its body ever so slightly to the left. This rotation helps avoid injury to the esophagus and trachea, which are located on the right side of the bird’s neck.

There’s more. You can read or listen to the whole story (it’s short) by following the link to How Brown Pelicans Dive After Fish Without Breaking Their Necks at Audubon.

To learn more about Brown Pelicans and terns, visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's indispensable website, All About Birds.

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Note to basketball fans: In no way is this post to be considered an endorsement of the New Orleans Pelicans. Fun as they've been to watch, I remain committed to the Boston Celtics.

Comments

[joel hanes]

Spent one of the best autumn afternoons of my life laying supine on a long sandspit, watching flock after flock of white pelicans go south. Once we found the focus depth, we saw there were thousands of them, a mile in the air, in perfect sparkling white/black Vs just visible against the deep blue sky. Scarcely a wingbeat among them.
I had my Dad to talk to, a thermos of coffee, and the sunshine just warm enough for comfort.

[Mary Ellen Sandahl]

Very interesting, thank you - nature is prodigious.
I saw a pelican grooming its feathers while sitting on the back of a park bench in London's Hyde Park -- sea birds often show up in London's parks, but I guess pelicans are a bit unusual, as this one had attracted an admiring circle of surprised homo sapiens. The pelican was unfazed.

I live in northern New Jersey, in well-wooded, long-established suburbia -- and a gorgeous male rose-breasted grosbeak showed up at my bird feeder earlier today! A real event, according to one of mu bird books, as grosbeaks are birds of the canopy and don't come down to feeders that often. I don't think any supreme being would be regretful about them either.