Brown Pelicans

See? How could you resist posting this?  I don't care that they weren't on the feeder in my yard or paddling around the duck pond. I'm the kind of guy who, when I take pictures of Brown Pelicans, I post them.

These things were endangered just a few years ago because of pesticides contaminating their food.  The beautiful and huge Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds (1980 copyright) I was lucky enough to be loaned lists them as rare and in steep decline. But strict regulation of pollutants has led to a huge increase in their numbers. I took these pictures of scores, if not hundreds, of birds during a short boat ride around Long Beach harbor on the day health care reform passed in the House. When I first visited California as a kid in the late '70's, had I thought to look I would not have seen a single Brown Pelican. To those who say government is the cause of our problems and not a solution, may you never see such beauty.

Brown Pelicans in Long Beach Harbor, March 21, 2010, around 1:00 p.m., taken with Wendy's Canon PowerShot Elph from a moving 21' Duffy electric boat I was piloting (captaining? driving?) at the time.  I don't remember how I first identified them, but I looked them up in the Encyclopedia when I got home.