Pelican, Pelican

When you watch a pelican, you can’t help but revert back to childhood, when you would point to birds with pudgy kid fingers and gape at them with wide kid eyes and spend nights trying to figure out how they can actually fly.

Back then, we were all pretty sure it was magic.


There’s a childlike innocence to pelicans that is unique to these striking birds. They float on the surface of lakes and rivers and oceans and look like the cartoon versions of swans, awkward wings and awkward faces and awkward bills. A teenage imitation of a real bird.

When they fly, it’s as if it’s taking all of their concentration and physical control to keep aloft. When they stand, fowl gargoyles overseeing the ways of boats and picnickers and snorkelers, it’s as if they need every bit of their energy not to tumble gauchely over into the seas below. And when they catch that slow, unsuspecting fish, they gulp it down with the juvenile fervor of a toddler who just snuck into a pint of ice cream.


You can’t help but feel a naïve, uncomplicated happiness when watching pelicans, and you want to point a pudgy kid finger and laugh a kid giggle and wonder how it is those things can actually fly…