Taking The Plunge

Florida’s brown pelicans

You see them, black against the sky, a long single-file squadron of feathered dinosaurs. Long necks are folded into zees, heads resting on backs, and the wings – wider than you are tall – are shaped to cup the wind. Preternatural bills punch the air like jousting lances.

They flap their wings – not in unison but in precise sequence, each flapping in the exact spot where the lead bird began to flap – giving the sense of rippling along a single splendid spine of sky. A few lazy wing flaps launch them on a long, gravity-mocking glide. They bank as a solid scimitar, leaning on the wind, carving up the sky-blue pie.

Brown pelicans. Marauders, ponderous, even ominous, they fly toward you. Of one strung-out, slip-streaming mind, they swoop down and slide arrow-straight above the tops of scumbled waves.

Read the entire article in the September 2002 issue