The Pelican Briefly
Today in this cold, foggy weather, my mind has drifted back to New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Bright sunny days and so many birds. We were there last February and today I just remembered a few photos I wanted to look at again. Took a while to find them. I guess I take a lot of photographs!
My husband’s mother, Grandma Doris, lives in New Smyrna and she loves it there. It is warm and sunny most of the days. Doris really enjoys going to this marina restaurant and especially loves to bring her out-of-town guests here. The food is fine but the atmosphere is what’s to love about it. The restaurant is on the dock and porpoise swim by, that is fun to watch when they show up. But, as annoying as they were, I do love to watch the pelicans.
Just a stone’s throw across from the marina restaurant, is a tiny island that is about the footprint of a small drugstore, the locals call it, “bird island” because it is covered with so many birds, lots of different looking birds. It gets quite noisy at particular times and during the regular mealtimes it is not unusual for the pelicans to be flying about looking for a hand out. There’s a variety of herons and cranes that show up around the trash areas once in a while, it’s weird to see beautiful birds with feathery crowns and colorful plumage digging through trash when you’re used to seeing dull grey seagulls and crows picking through the garbage.
Mostly there are pelicans. These are such peculiar birds with that long pouchy beak and a rather intimidating hook at the tip of it. They sit there and stare and beg like seagulls only the size of a very large goose. I didn’t feed them though, can you imagine these strange looking birds being so comfortable as to just come down and land on your table like a seagull? Yipe!
Pelican on the Pier
New Smyrna Beach, FL
