American White Pelicans Coming Home to Roost

August 25, 2009

We came out to the Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, my wife and I, in the early evening for a fruit and cheese supper at the Eagle Bluff Access area, to relax on our fold-up chairs for a quiet time observing life on the refuge, perhaps a bit of reading, and to watch the sun fall below the bluffs across the Illinois River valley. But except for a few swallows of various kinds, great blue herons, and double-crested cormorants, there was not much wildlife activity on the refuge; not even a need for setting up the spotting scope.

After our supper, and just before sundown, we left the observation deck for a walk across the refuge, toward the Illinois River, on the levee that separates the refuge’s north and south pools of Lake Chautauqua. And that was also when many birds became increasingly active. There were more foraging swallows, which passed over the cross levee on their way between the two refuge pools; several loudly calling Caspian terns; a great horned owl hooting from obscurity within the black willow thickets; and a lone pectoral sandpiper that drew our attention on the barren sand along the water’s edge. Then at once, we saw a line of American white pelicans flying in an long, undulating, repeating pattern across the sky, then another group, and then still another, which abruptly changed direction as the group flew low directly above us, apparently nervous about flying so close to two human beings. Before too long, more pelicans flew over, and we estimated a couple thousand that joined together into one large grouping in the far corner of the refuge’s north pool, gathering together in a large night roost on the water.

As the sun sank below the horizon, we heard loudly calling cicadas, another sure sign of summer’s imminent end.