deceivingly languid aves

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I’ve never been one big into birds, except for penguins and woody woodpecker, of course. Probably my first summer on the eastern shore of Maryland I began appreciating our feathered friends - if only in early evening flight patterns over cornfields. And I certainly didn’t expect to be wowed when visiting Djoudj Park - whether it’s an internationally recognized birding site or not.



I was particularly skeptical of our ‘pelican-viewing’ boat ride. I’ve been out on many pirogues at this point, through delta areas and some open ocean, and while I enjoy the scenery and lapping of the boat, I’ve been scanty impressed by the aves - binoculars or binocular vision. More often it was on the motorbike chasing through Gambia that I was genuinely taken by the metallic birds fluttering out of our dusty path.



But I climbed aboard the pirogue with my fine-tuned podiatric balancing skills acquired necessarily living here, and was happy to be among good friends, even under the increasingly hot late morning sun.


We had been chugging along for about 15 minutes, friends and other tourists onboard oohing and aahing over every winged creature…I was staying alert for crocs, mind you (which, we finally saw a baby one!)…and even impressed by the water lilies…then there was this silence…I might have heard swooping or gliding (if gliding had a noise) - and when I tell you - I turned to look behind the pirogue and in the sky flowed a stream of pelicans, hundreds of them, gracefully riding some invisible rollercoaster.



Their awkward beaks and pudgy shapes non-withstanding - they moved as one. So much so I could almost feel their dips and soars, the way one feels the ocean’s pulse after a day’s swim. While my scientific brain was clicking away - searching to piece together information I had once interpreted for others on bird flight and that mimicked by humans - my reverential self floated. At one point, I imagined I was inside of a Dreamworks production - with some really great animation, sans the corny voiceovers...though I wonder what those pelicans would have to say for themselves (or to one another for that matter).



This was just 2 hours of my trip to Djoud and St. Louis…more to come…

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Photos

those graceful birds them
this shot makes them look more like they're on bumper cars...it's hard to catch the single-file follow-the-leader rollercoaster ride...

at dock
having a laugh watching some unseasoned tourist unsteadily find their footing on the slick wooden planks of the pirogue

in my habitat
it's the first time in a long time where i felt 'home' - back to my earth-hugging vegetarian roots...save the gas-guzzling wreck of a vehicle we traveled in...

not in kansas anymore
though it doesn't feel too different from florida, really. caught this fine silhouette on our day's end walk. an entirely different avian pleasure on this particular thanksgiving.