Eye on the sky for birds of both nature and man
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- August 8, 2023
- 819
A dedicated birder keeps one eye on the sky in nearly every situation. The same can be said of folks interested in aviation. I lived an eye-on-the-sky double-whammy last week when I traveled with family to Oshkosh, Wisconsin to experience the world's largest airshow. My pilot son-in-law was our inspiration and tour guide for the trip where nearly 700,000 people from all over the world converge to immerse themselves in all things aircraft.
As one might imagine, accommodations nearby are booked years in advance, but we were happy to land in a little two-room cabin next to a shallow lake about 45 minutes from the festivities. Four adults, three big dogs and two little boys make for pretty tight company in a two-room cabin, but if we do it again, we’ll likely do it the very same way. There’s a lot of fun to be had when you cram three generations and a mess of mutts into such a tight space.
While I could go on forever about the airshow proper, this particular space belongs to thoughts on nature. Fortunately, Mother Nature offered me a little airshow of her own as I walked the lake shore with my grandson. Purple martins, eastern kingbirds and various other insect eaters swirled above our heads while ducks, geese and the occasional coot cruised the lily pads offshore. A dazzlingly white great egret winged its way overhead, and I thought the 3-year-old would burst from excitement.
Far beyond the shore, we saw a group of several dozen white dots on the line where the water transitioned to sky. I figured it to be a grouping of egrets or perhaps even a gathering of swans. I made it a point to bring my telephoto lens down to the water on our next walk.
Within a few hours, we were back at the water’s edge to find one of our “distant white dots” had made its way right into our bay to slowly float among the lilies and stab at the finned shadows below. I’d never seen a pelican on the water before, but I’ve seen plenty of brown pelicans in flight along the East Coast. What was a curiosity to me was an all-out spectacle to James. Can you imagine how fantastical a bird with a wingspan three times bigger than the full stretch of your own arms could be to a little boy? And one that could eat an entire foot-long fish in one gulp?
With my own curiosity piqued, I dug in to find the American white pelican has been enjoying a huge and successful resurgence in numbers, along with an unprecedented expansion in range over the past 30 years. Researchers in Wisconsin, where the bird had been largely gunned off the map by 1870, noted just two nests in 1993 — both located in the state’s Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. Within 20 years the number of nests statewide had increased to over 4,000 — and with no direct human intervention. For comparison’s sake, in Ohio it took 40 years and endless amounts of advocacy for bald eagle numbers to grow from just four nests in 1979 to 707 active nesting sites in 2020.
Wildlife biologists believe the pelican’s range is expanding due to less favorable conditions in traditional breeding areas in the Canadian Prairie Provinces. Fortunately, the bird seems to have been able to rapidly adapt to conditions further south and east. That means if the expansion continues, there may well be white pelicans in our future here in Ohio. If you spot a white bird with a 9-foot wingspan and a yellow bill the length of your thigh, you’ll know they’ve arrived!
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.