Hi Tweets,

James Easton writes:

>This is obviously of great interest and I'm extremely grateful.

Nice of you to say, James, but show us the *money*! Just make the cheque
payable to the Tweeters Benevolent Fund for Superannuated Birders. '-)

>At the moment, I don't have access to a book on North American birds,
>but I did find the following note:
>
>"Pelicans fly in long lines, sometimes in a V formation, sometimes
>abreast, sometimes in single file directly behind one another. Most
>often they form a wide echelon, each bird slightly behind and to one
>side of the next".
>
>Source: Birds of the World, by Oliver L. Austin Jr., p 42

You might want to try Harrison's 'Seabirds: an identification guide' as
well. Don B's description of their flight-style and -profile is *very* apt,
while Richard 'Great Minds Think Alike' Rowlett's description of the
sometimes spooky weirdness of birds so far away as to be unidentifiable as
birds is quite evocative.

>If the "gap" Arnold mentions is a known feature of Pelican formations,
>perhaps someone could kindly confirm for the record.

Fortuitous, in my opinion; all line-abreast, -diagonal and -astern flocking
birds develop gaps and fill them in randomly.

>"What startled me the most was the fact that I could not find any
>tails on them".

How close *was* he?

>Which would seem to be consistent!

>From a small plane, looking for such relatively small body features as tails
is like a grown man standing above a penny on the ground and trying to make
out the date.

>There's considerable information about the American White Pelican
>(AWP) available from several web sites and this has also proved to be
>informative. One thing I couldn't find anywhere was confirmation of
>the typical airspeed for an AWP.

With those big barndoor wings they're like large herons: they always seem to
moving slower than they actually are. I'd guess somewhere in the 50-80 km/hr
range. Don? Any ideas?

>Arnold stated that, "the time was about 3:00 PM and the sun was just
>slightly to the southwest of being directly overhead" and also
>estimated that the objects "were pretty much on the horizon to me
>which would indicate that they were near the same elevation as me".

They're on the horizon and he's looking for *tails*? Holy Nelly, that's
ambition for ya. Well, that would be 2 PM without Daylight Saving Time, so
the sun position would be as he said. Assuming he was looking at birds, the
flipflop appearance of these birds would be visible whether higher, same
altitude, or lower as the sun might be reflecting strongly and directly off
white upper and/or underwing surfaces, but the underwings might be catching
light from the same source as caused the flashes mentioned further on.

>Under conditions where "the sky and air was as clear as crystal", the
>almost directly overhead sun would presumably also be significantly
>reflected from Pelicans, even if Arnold was horizontal with the
>formation or at a higher altitude?

I think we'd be able to accept Arnold's word about relative altitudes as
literal truth: pilots require a good sense of spatial relationship;
otherwise, they'd be passengers.

>We'll obviously never prove what Kenneth Arnold witnessed, although
>the AWP explanation does seem the most likely explanation.

If one accepts an earthly origin for what he saw.

>What has been cited as evidence ruling out a flock of birds, is that
>Arnold, unquestionably a highly experienced pilot, claimed, "I hadn't
>flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash
>light reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too
>close to some other aircraft".
>"Before I had time to collect my thoughts or to find a close aircraft,
>the flash happened again".
>
>Appreciating this may be a difficult question, would the reflection
>from an AWP conceivably be so bright as to reflect on a nearby
>airplane?

How nearby? If he wasn't close enough to see form or other finer-point
feature on the putative birds, then the answer would have to be a
categorical no. The flashes would have to originate somewhere else, such as
from reflections from facets of the glacial ice on nearby Mt. Rainier, or
from the surface of a body of standing water below his plane, or from the
just-so alignment of the roof of a large aluminum shed.

>I would have thought not and could otherwise only explain this as a
>subjective recollection, Arnold merely observing a "bright flash".

We'll never know, but it's fun to speculate. I'd suggest that whatever it
was, it originated locally. Given the year and the then-emergent postwar
geopolitics, I even toyed with the idea that he might have been seeing the
heat-flash from a daytime shot at the Nevada Proving Grounds: even a 'small'
atmospheric detonation in the low kiloton range produces a bright flash that
would have been seen in full daylight over a very large area. Not likely: as
far as I can recollect, the only test area then was the New Mexico desert.
Any ex-AEC or military folks out there who can flesh this out historically
without having to divulge 'burn-before-reading' secrets? Speaking of
which--testing, not classified data--have any credible studies ever been
done on the mortality, short- and long-term impacts on local wildlife
communities by atmospheric or subterranean atomic testing? Just curious.

>Thank you for the Arthur C. Clarke reference, which I will follow up.

I've come to have doubts that it was Profiles of the Future, but fershure it
was a late Fifties to mid Sixties-period nonfic title.

>Also to Richard and Don for the interesting contributions.

Yep, James, we're an inventive bunch on Tweeters, at *least* as inventive as
UFO-enthusiasts. And we even make it sound *likely*. '-)

>You do realise, I'll never convince the "true believers". <g>
>PELICANS!!! It's an outrage!!

Reality usually is. They'll get over it. Or not. That's their problem.

Michael Price We aren't flying...we're falling with style!
Vancouver BC Canada -Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story
mprice at mindlink.net