Three days ago I was fishing at a small lake in southeast Wyoming. A pelican landed and settled in for a self-grooming session about 20 feet from where I was sitting. After a while the pelican started getting closer until it was 10 feet away. It meandered around my back while emitting little piles feces every minute or two and settled on the other side about 10 feet away. I hooked a fish and was reeling it in when I noticed the pelican preparing to try to grab the fish when it became visible.
I was crafty and managed to grab the fish with my left hand. It was a nice one, about twice the size of what usually comes out of that body of water. The pelican really wanted it and circled me twice trying to get me to drop it. It was a large bird with a 6 or 7 foot wingspan. I picked up my short landing net and started swinging it at the bird. I gave it a whack on its beak and it backed away far enough for me to get the fish into a plastic bag which then went into my backpack. The pelican moved about 20 feet away and settled down for a break, probably waiting for me to hook another fish.
I wouldn’t have thought of pelicans living at that elevation. While we’ve always had pelicans around many of our Minnesota lakes, we’ve seen a real uptick in the last couple of years. I wonder if pelicans survived the bird flu better than some of our other natives and are filling their niches.
We got irrigation today, and I looked out and saw this Heron standing in the water.
Then, I noticed that there were also some ducks, too:
My wife and I were having tea, and suddenly there was a big shadow blocking the sunlight. We looked out the window, and look who was perched on our railing:
Nature strikes again in the middle of Berlin. I was walking down the stairs where I live and thought that was the fattest pigeon I had ever seen sitting in the back yard (Innenhof for those who know residential old buildings in Berlin). Then I saw it was holding a mouse in his claws.
Wait a minute, that is not a pigeon, it’s a hawk! And those are not claws, those are talons! And that is not a mouse, it is a rat, and it is still wiggling!
Then some neighbours walked into the back yard and the hawk flew away with the rat firmly in his talons and was gone.
One of Berlin’s claims to birdwatching fame. The other candidate would be the fairly similar Eurasian sparrowhawk, but that very strong eye stripe (supercilium) reads goshawk to me. Also goshawks are far more likely to go for a rat than a sparrowhawk, which stick much more heavily to birds.
The Mrs. and I took a boat tour of the Horicon marsh today, along with a 2.5 mile hike into it. We saw a flock of well over 50 sandhill cranes flying right over and around us, hooting and hollering. Quite impressive. Also geese, termagants, blue herons and ducks. A very enjoyable warm sunny, windy day.
Very interesting. Curiosity piqued, I checked the status of goshawks in London - but they’re no more than maybe an occasional visitor, it seems. The reason I checked is that I knew that London has a thriving population of peregrine falcons:
With a magnificent 30 or so pairs nesting in the city, London now has the second-highest urban peregrine population anywhere in the world, after New York City.
