Video: Beak-cam of rescued pelican relearning to fly

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I’ve always loved watching pelicans fly, especially when they’re doing the radar-avoidance thing, just skimming the water’s surface. It was also neat to see bird’s breathing pattern while in flight–just watch where the lower jaw meets the upper beak to see the steady breathing going on. Very cool.

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This video, while inspirational to humans, seems pretty horrifying if you happen to be a fish.

Beak mounted cam? shudder

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Pelicans make me profoundly happy, for some reason.

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Well, that wouldn’t be a problem, if fish spent less time watching TV…

… And more time in school.

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Indeed. They really are incredibly beautiful while “at work,” yet so goofy at rest.

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Bird Nerd Trivia (IIRC) - Humans use muscles to inhale, and exhale by relaxing. For birds, it’s the opposite.

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I feel as if I am being baited to respond :wink:

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@pesco

In the future please add a youtube link under the embedded video. It makes it vastly easier to launch youtube on Android, etc.

I doubt the pelican “forgot” how to fly. It was probably experiencing shock and fear after its experience with the storm.

If I were a pelican and some jackass glued a foreign object to my beak, I’d probably not be too keen to fly, either. Of course, once he started chasing me down the beach waving his big ape-arms at me…

Erm, the pelican, as photographer, owns all rights to this image. Have you cleared this with the pelican?

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