They have got a bad rap on these magnificent birds. But really, they are Buddha Birds. They don’t kill. They eat the already dead. They are nature’s cleanup crew.
These days, the way my eyesight is going (by the way of the Dodo, incidentally), to me there are now only four kinds of birds: ospreys (for all birds of prey), gulls (for all sea birds), the ubiquitous crows, including their bigger siblings, ravens — they ought to wear signs, you know, these two: an “R” for Raven and a “C” for crows, to help us tell them apart — hey, God, would that have been so hard?, and sparrows (for all small birds — though at times I can make out swallows as well, darting within arm’s reach, and I probably would not miss a swan — or an albatross).
Oh, yes, I do recognize pelicans as well, these magnificent wing-tip skaters of ocean surfaces. They arrive by the thousands for quick overnights on their way up north and usually pay us a visit on their way back south.
As a very cool pelican aside: I once watched a brief of pelicans in flight formation, a few hundred of them heading south. Lagging about two hundred meters behind were two (I’m guessing young) birds, who apparently had trouble keeping up. And as I watched, a large, mature bird broke out from the…
