Another pelican encounter
As she writes about the white pelican that has been capturing interest on Cape Sable Island, Vanguard reporter Carla Allen thinks back to another pelican encounter she had in 2006. Here’s a look back at a capture of a different sort in 2006.
I can’t help but think back to December 2006 – the year I caught a pelican.
Driving home from work two days after Christmas I saw a string of cars parked on the shoulder off the South Ohio overpass. Slowing down, I saw a strange bird strolling along the center line. The warmest temperatures in 117 years had just been recorded during the past week but it was still mighty unusual to recognize a pelican.
I asked the crowd if anyone had a blanket in their car. One woman scurried to assist.
I tossed it over the bird. He was easy to catch – weak and hungry, he made little fuss.
A Natural Resources officer was on the way, so when he arrived I passed the pelican over, bearing in mind my editor’s frequent reminder... Carla, we REPORT the news, we don’t make it.
I remember how his top beak ended in a tiny hook and how sheer the membrane of that huge pouch felt. A band on his leg later identified him as one of 259 brown pelican chicks banded on Wainwright Island, North Carolina on July 27, 2003. Naturalists suspect that storms blew him off track.
He was delivered to the Eastern Shore Wildlife Rehab Centre in Seaforth where Hope Swinimer nursed him back to health. Named Nigel, after a pelican in the movie Finding Nemo, the bird flew to Florida the easy way courtesy of Air Canada a short while later.
I spoke to Wendy Fox at the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station in Miami after his arrival. “Your little pal’s doing great!” she said. They planned on keeping him at the facility for a little while because of some frostbite on his toes.
“We’ve got him in a pen with slow moving birds then I’ll move him over to the rowdy crowd. They’re all his age,” she said.