The weather was superb yesterday and we visited our favorite walking trail out at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area—along with a lot of people who had the same idea. It was around 60 degrees and not a cloud in the azure blue sky.
The highlight was the big flocks of white birds with black markings under the wings sailing over Sand Lake. Observers we encountered had different opinions about what species they were.
At first, I thought they were pelicans, which are frequent visitors at the park. On the other hand, a few thought they were storks and for a while I took their side. The further we walked and the more video I got, and the more people we talked with, the less sure we were about these very large white birds. Many people were very sure they were pelicans.
After we got home, I looked on the internet for education about how to tell the difference between storks and pelicans—and was convinced that the birds we saw were pelicans. I was able to enlarge a picture I pulled from one of my video clips which showed clearly the large bill.
I guess this is a good place for Dixon Lanier Merritt’s 1910 limerick about the pelican:
“A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week!
But I’m darned if I know how the hellican!”
Despite the tall tales about storks bearing babies, the fact is their beaks are narrow.
So, this actually takes me back to the one person on our walk who was convinced that the large, wheeling birds were storks. She joked around about the idea a little and asked Sena if she knew the story about how Dumbo was born. It just so happened was lost on us because we’d never seen the 1941 Disney film Dumbo and it turns out that a stork brought Dumbo to the train dragging a car full of elephants, one of which was Mrs. Dumbo.
And there’s a very complicated explanation of the stork myth about them delivering babies to mothers—although not in their beaks but in a bundle.
Aside from the pelicans, we saw many signs of spring, including buds on the trees, the ice melting on Sand Lake, and people gazing at the sky-waiting for spring.
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