Mr pelican, your love gives me wings

Damien Enright recalls a strange affair between volunteer and pelican.

FROM childhood, I’ve always known pelicans were weird, my father having told me, early on, about their capacious throat-sacs. “A remarkable bird is the pelican,” he said, “Its beak can hold more than it’s belly can…” And while I believed him, I determined to one day see them to establish if this was true.

In America, I watched brown pelicans skimming the waves at Muir Beach in California. In Mexico, I watched white pelicans flying in V-formations over the Sea of Cortez. At Bharatpur in India, I saw Dalmatian pelicans, which I could have seen much nearer home, in Croatia. Why they went all the way to India, I’m not sure, except perhaps they liked to travel, like I did.