Pelicans In Denver

I was taking a walk through Washington Park the other day and noticed a number of pelicans out on the ponds, such as the one in the photograph on the left.  This is nothing new, but it still amazes me to see birds here in Denver that I associate only with the ocean, which is nearly a thousand miles away.  I found some articles on the internet that explain that these are American white pelicans, and migrate inland from the coasts for the breeding season, which I assume is now. These birds often layover in Denver because, according to a wildlife ecologist with Denver Parks and Recreation, "they like our parks and what our parks have to offer," kind of like Canadian Geese and Californians.  During the winter, they return to the Pacific and Gulf Coasts, although like those Californians and Canadian geese, they very well might never leave.  The Canadian geese got so plentiful in Washington Park last summer that the city of Denver wound up culling over 1,000 of them, giving the resulting meat to food banks.  The white pelicans seem to be a lot fewer in number, and so hopefully that will not happen to them.  As for the Californians, I think only roadblocks at the state line will keep them out.

The white pelicans here in Denver are much different from the brown pelicans that I am used to seeing in Stuart, Florida, where my mother Mary lived for almost 30 years.  For one thing, brown pelicans dive from great heights into the ocean to catch fish, whereas white pelicans feed from the water's surface.  I took the photograph on the right of my sister Susan and mother Mary pointing at those brown pelicans in front of the Pirate's Loft, a popular restaurant and resort hotel located in Port Salerno, Florida.  Several times during our visits to Stuart, my sister would exclaim out loud "Look! Penguins!," which definitely got people's attention, although all they saw when they looked up were the usual pelicans.  In her defense, my sister is, like me, originally from the south side of Chicago, where there are no pelicans, white or brown, or penguins, or for that matter, as far as I can recall, Canadian geese.  Easy mistake, right?