"Critters"--The Pelicans

December 18, 2025

A bird, or a fish eating aircraft?

Between the ages of 8 and 18 I lived within walking distance of a mangrove swamp and the docks at the Diablo Spinning Club. So I got to know pelicans, brown pelicans, and their noisy claims on the spaces we shared. You could lose a catch to a pelican, or a group of pelicans but also appreciate their comedy.

I can’t say I missed them when I moved north, to the inland Northwest. But I do remember being flabbergasted the first time I saw an American White Pelican. It was far from the ocean, and the largest living thing I’d ever seen with wings. It was on the Columbia River, not far from where the Columbia makes its hook-like turn against the majestic White Bluffs northwest of Ringold, east of the Vernita bridge, north of Rattlesnake Mountain.

I may have rubbed my eyes. It was clearly a pelican, and I was unprepared to see a pelican that far from the ocean. Then to learn that these enormous birds—with eight-foot wingspans at maturity—breed throughout the inner reaches of the American west. Who knew? Not me. What a way to find out.

Squadron of American White Pelicans east of Sprague, WA

“Let a squadron of southbound pelicans but feel a lift of prairie breeze over Clandeboye and they sense at once that here is a landing in the geological past, a refuge from that most relentless of aggressors, the future. With queer antediluvian grunts they set wing, descending in majestic spirals to the welcoming wastes of a bygone age.” ― Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 1949.

I have yet to see a pelican on the Spokane River, but I have seen them, and photographed them, at Clear Lake on the West Plains, about 15 miles to the southwest, and further to the west at the Fishtrap slough and Sprague Lake beyond. From afar they can be mistaken for hang gliders.

—tjc

p.s. Please support this project with a paid subscription to The Daily Rhubarb at the link below.

Brown Pelicans on the Intracoastal Waterway near Jacksonville, FL

Gaggle of American White Pelicans at Clear Lake, west of Spokane

Swirling white pelicans east of Pasco, WA

Pelican pair on Sprague Lake