Pelicans

I swim in San Francisco Bay about once a week. Throughout the summer, we see a lot of brown pelicans while we are swimming. They are very, very big up close, and they cast a huge shadow (rather alarming the first time you see it) when they fly over you close to the water.

Like a lot of water birds, they are much less wary of people in the water than they are of people on shore. You can pretty much swim right up to them before they change course to avoid you. We don't swim up to them on purpose, of course; more often, we are swimming along and they are floating along, sort of paddling and sort of just chilling, and we all (bird and human) realize all of a sudden that we are very near. Or they'll be flying over, intending to stop on the water, and have to make a last minute course change to avoid alighting on a swimmer's head.

I haven't seen any pelicans while swimming yet this year. But last week I did see a pelican fly past the window of my office, many stories above Market Street in San Francisco. It was traveling north, and it seemed from the brown head to be a juvenile. It wasn't a bird I had expected at all to see so high off the ground, and in the middle of the city.