Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Pelicans! Feeding Frenzy!

 
For most of my life, I have lived near the ocean, the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean Sea.  I have seen sea birds flying and fishing for food in all those areas.  The most common are the pelicans, birds that have long beaks with membrane sacks attached to them to enable them to swallow whole fish.  They dive into the water, snag a fish and then raise their beaks to the sky to swallow them. 
 



The photos above show large groups diving and/or flying, looking for the next fish to dive for.  The photo below shows a group just resting, possibly full of fish, or just waiting to take off again.  I was so amazed at the sheer number of this group (only a small portion of them are shown above), that I stayed there for quite a while, taking video and still photos.

 
I put some of the video clips together in a video on You Tube - check it out, you'll be amazed at these birds diving from quite high up.  These photos do not even begin to show the magnitude of this event!   It's surprising they don't run into each other! 
 
 

 

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great pics and video. That must have been an awesome experience to be there!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! As many as I've seen, this was over the top! And they do it all the time!

    ReplyDelete