Not very often can you be right in the middle of a White Pelican feeding.
This is a small group, out of the hundreds of feeding birds in the shallows.
When the big guys start to feed smaller birds move, or get run over.
Not Seen Every Day, Pelican
Beautiful, they looks almost like big cotton.
The mud changes that after a while.
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….so–based on your earlier posted reflections, I assume (not being anywhere near where you are, thus not familiar at all with these species) that when pelicans form a group feeding like this, they are also insulating themselves from the annoyance and intrusion of food-robbing seagulls–that bonding into a large group is a barrier to seagull-badgering?
Actually here, more than Gull worries here. This was taken in a huge South Carolina marsh, once large rice plantation fields. Not shown here (other posts soon) was hundreds of Egrets, Storks, and Herons. Shallow swamp/marsh water creates a feeding frenzy while the fish are still there.
I love the pelicans. A couple of months ago I saw my first Brown Pelicans. I am looking forward to the whites coming back here to Iowa this spring. I watched them last year, a group of them would swim right up to a cement wall along the river and all dunk there heads under water at the same time, but only by the wall. I tried to zoom in closer, I can only assume there was fish there, but could not see any of them with a fish in their bills. They are so fascinating.
Yes, they were fishing. Completely different style from the Brown Pelican. White Pelican ‘herd fish’ along until they can raise up with a catch already in their beak.
That is what I was wondering. Thank you.