Pelicans!

What a magnificent bird is the pelican. This limerick by Dixon Lanier Merritt captures the wonder of the bird.

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill will hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week,

But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

Shoreline Park in Mountain View, CA is a stop for the spectacular white pelicans during their winter migration. Look at these beauties! My father and I together first saw them in 2009.

We saw only a few during his 2019 visit, as most of them had already gone south by the time we went to see them in October.

Big flocks of white pelicans at Shoreline Park, Mountain View, CA in September, 2020.

A heron with fish in beak...the timing was perfect.

From Ocean Beach, San Francisco in August, 2020, a magical shot of a brown pelican against the ocean, the sun and the sky.

And more from that day...

On a beautiful, sunny day in December 2020, my daughter and I went over to Santa Cruz, California, and there to my delight, were a whole lot of brown pelicans.

A seagull was not to be outdone, taking the highest perch.

And then another gift of brown pelicans in San Francisco Bay, seen from Richmond, California on Christmas Eve 2020 with Sonja and Pieter, with San Francisco, Angel Island and the sun behind them.

My daughter knows my love for pelicans. She has drawn two for me so far. Gorgeous!