Friday, July 23, 2010

American White Pelican

I'm back in Oregon and decided to spend some time at Fernhill Wetlands. It was a beautiful day, mid 70's and mostly sunny, and the ponds were active with birds.
I had seen American White Pelicans here before, but always far off in one of the inaccessible ponds. Today they were in the pond just north of the main Fernhill pond. They didn't make it easy for me however as they were leery of my presence, always swimming away before I could get too close. They eventually flew off leaving me only a handful of reasonably close pictures.
I continued on walking the service roads and eventually circled back towards the same pond. Before getting there, I saw them fly back in, so my hopes were up that I'd get a second chance.
Sure enough, they were still there when I arrived, but they were still a bit cautious. After slowly following them around for a while and getting a few good pictures, a few took off flying. However this time, instead of flying away from me, they flew over head, allowing me to get several in-air photos.
Based on the brown on the back of head of the Pelican in the photo above, I believe this one is immature.

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