I had an interesting "revelation" about birds that started with American
White Pelican.

For many years I commuted all over the US from Seattle. I did a 6 week gig
in Reno and made the flights down twice a week. I usually only sit in aisle
seats, but I got an upgrade with a window seat on one particular flight. As
I was looking out the window while flying over Klamath I noticed that there
were a lot of what I took to be hang-gliders soaring around - the wings
looked narrow but even at 28,000 feet I could see that the wings were wider
than cars. As we decended into Reno past Pyramid Lake I noticed the same
thing - lots of hang gliders - I thought - until I realized that they all
had the same pattern - White Pelicans! I was seeing them from 3-5 miles up
and they still were identifiable - without binos or a scope - that is an
impressive bird. I made sure I got window seats from that trip forward.


Rob Conway
Newcastle, WA

robin_birder at hotmail.com