and I’ll say it again (at least once) . .
”Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His bill holds more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week.
But I’m darned if I know how the helican.”
PS: Mr. and Mrs. Painted Bunting are still hanging out in my palmetto bushes this evening!
BW
Yes, but what kind of nest is it?
Oh, how I’ve missed you! You, my virtually real friends, were temporarily replaced by real-life people of all shapes, color, sizes, and gender strolling past my “booth” into the abyss of dead animal heads and dead fish adorning the walls and other walls and racks loaded with equipment to shoot those animals and to catch…
Here’s what we did between the dining room and kitchen. Here’s a gander at the bar/separator from the kitchen view BEFORE demolition And here it is again from the living room view BEFORE demolition The AFTER view from the kitchen. Now it’s not there! See? No, you don’t see it. And again from the living…
Here it is folks. Video of the opening of the Morganza Spillway earlier this afternoon. Video compliments of WAFB TV.
We wound our way up a curvy bayou, looking for fishy water, and around the second curve she spotted a fishy-looking current line running from the western bank across the middle of the bayou and around the curve. We drifted in, and not long after she slung her bright yellow popping cork, it disappeared below the surface.
“F I S H O N!” Patti yelled with as much enthusiasm as a die-hard football fan screaming “TOUCHDOWN!”, and I was as happy for her as she was about reeling in that yellow-mouthed speckled trout.
We continued to pull in fish every few minutes at that spot until boat traffic scattered the fish, making them too spotty to find. Trolling on up the bayou, we cast around a few points that looked like ideal spots for trout to be hanging out waiting for bait fish. However, none of those spots were as profitable as our first stop.
Once we traveled to the end of my GPS bread crumb line and farther than I had ever explored before, we tested the waters. Nothing. We looked for cuts in the marsh, where the bait-filled water flowed into the bayou, carrying the unsuspecting bait to the bigger fish that awaited. We fished a couple of those spots without much luck.
Bayou Woman shares a holiday appetizer recipe.
Saw a blue heron trying to do a pelican move today.
Ended up deeper than its feet.
3 ospreys today. And beezillions of geese.
Cool! I got a closeup of green heron . . . coming soon . . .
When we were in Grand Isle a few weeks ago, we saw something we’d never seen before. Dozens of Pelicans lined up on a power line going through the Marsh. It was a very strange sight. BW, have you ever seen them on power lines?
I do enjoy watching Pelicans feed. I get tickled when they dive. They aren’t the most graceful birds.
Steffi – I have NOT seen them do that. Makes you wonder if the oil spill still has some of them a little “spooked” about where they can land and roost????
I used to think that pelicans weren’t graceful birds but the more I watch them, the more I realized how graceful they really are. They are kind of like ballet dancers with a big nose or something true but love watching them sail over the water.
Lucky you on the painted buntings still hanging around!
Magnificent is the word I use for them!
I love your jingle/poem. How in the world do pelicans balance on power lines with webbed feet? They are webbed, right?
Our birds all seem to have left for the year. I haven’t seen my little doves that came out daily for the cracked pecans I would put on the edge of our side street. And, even the sparrows and blackbirds are scarce. Very unusual. We do have chimney swallows across the street since my chimney is covered with a thick screen. The house next door had 3 humongous chimneys until last month that they nested in. They reroofed and removed those gorgeous chimneys. I had the fun of explaining how Santa was going to bring gifts to anyone over there to the youngest two grandkids. LOL. I am so thankful they don’t know those vent pipes sticking up are part of the whole sewer system.
Wonder where your birds went? I have droves of red-winged black birds at my feeders right now, and hummers still fight over the sugar water every day.
The Hummers must all be headed your way. I haven’t seen any Hummers since Wednesday. Actually, I saw only one on that day. All the Red throats had already left.
Took two boys fishing for the local rodeo today. Fishing again tomorrow so they can hopefully get some fish on the board. When I weighed my “sea cat” in, I knocked the guy out of first place!!! His weighed 3.5 and mine weighed 5.5!!!
We are in full swing with bird migration here in southwest NM. All the summer residents have left and all the winter ones are moving in. I saw my first flock of juncos a few days ago and the flocks of sparrows are here.
Oh think of the slime? Throw the net away? Weather too weird here for good bite 40 deg temp swings.
Geaux Tigers
One of the little towns here has what they call a Pelican Path – statues of pelicans dressed in everything from ship captain uniforms to touristy floral shirts. Just funny, and more appealing than you might think.
I love the pelican poem – it’s one of the first ones my dad taught me, although he misattributed it to Ogden Nash and it took me decades to find out some dude named Dixon Lanier Merritt wrote it. But when I see the first white pelicans wheeling in from the north, it always comes to mind.
There’s one flock of the white that hang out at the edge of Galveston bay where the docks have falled apart – about 50 of them, and one pelican per piling! I just can’t imagine them on wires – neat trick, but it feels painful when I think about it…
So great to see them looking healthy.