382 THE WHITE PELICAN 



feed three!) and on emerging, the young bird showed none 

 of the signs of exhaustion which follow the young Brown 

 Pelican's similar efforts at fish-getting. In the confusion 

 occasioned by my coming, the young Pelicans had deserted 

 their nests or home-sites, and become to my eyes, hopeless 

 ly mixed in one compact wriggling mass ; but the parent 

 birds evidently had no difficulty in recognizing the members 

 of their own family, and established their claims without 

 those evidences of excitement and petty quarreling so char- 

 acteristic of the more nervous Gulls and Terns nearby. 

 Their only note was a deep-voiced, not loud, murmuring 

 groan. 



The adult birds had all lost the bill-knobs and white 

 nuchal crest of the nuptial season, and the latter was re- 

 placed by the singular black or grayish patch which is not 

 acquired until the breeding season is well advanced and is 

 lost as soon as it is over. 



It is unnecessary to set down here all the details of the 

 studies made on this occasion, but one exhibition of wing- 

 power which these unusually stolid birds gave me should 

 not be omitted. Pelicans mount in broad spirals to the 

 upper air not only to escape from danger below, but evi- 

 dently for the exhilaration of the exercise ; generally, there- 

 fore, numbers could be seen sailing serenely about, far over 

 head. On the afternoon in question a thunder storm devel- 

 oped rapidly, the sky became ominously black and threaten- 

 ing, and a strong wind whipped the tules into a rustling, 

 troubled sea of green. This atmospheric disturbance acted 

 upon the soaring birds in a remarkable manner, stimulating 

 them to perform aerial feats of which I had no idea they 

 were capable. They dived from the heavens like winged 

 meteors, the roar of the air through their stiff pinions 

 sounding as though they had torn great rents in the sky. 

 Approaching the earth they checked their descent by an up 

 shoot and then with amazing agility zig-zagged over the 

 marsh, darting here and there like Swallows after insects. 



