Unk and Pelicans

I found myself anxious and overly emotional the other morning (it was most likely migraine related). Anxiety is something I have dealt with throughout my life. I have learned to live with it. And I am quite comfortable with being a man of emotions. I believe with all my heart that it is okay, even good at times, for a man to cry. I just prefer no one ever actually see me do it. So, perhaps I am not as evolved as I would like. I feel things deeply and I do tear-up easily. That’s me.

This post is dedicated with all my heart to the man I called Unk (my mother’s brother, George). I have mentioned him before and certainly will again. He was my father figure and more than anyone else, shaped my love of the natural world. I miss him deeply.

He loved Pelicans. From about age 5 to 16, I travelled to Florida on vacation with him and my grandmother for two weeks in June. Those are without a doubt the happiest memories of my youth. Nothing else even comes close. In those days, the range of the Brown Pelican did not come north of about Georgia, so they were a magical bird that I only saw on those holidays. They were the avian symbol of that wondrous tropical heaven called Florida. Bear in mind this was in the late 50’s and 60’s, a time before the Orlando nightmare of Disney etc. We visited places like Weeki Wachee Springs and Silver Springs and Parrot Jungle! We spent a week every year on Sanibel Island, which back then, was absolutely heaven. I visited the J. N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge when it was only a wooden sign and a sand track through the mangroves. The Sanibel and Captiva Islands of the early 1960’s were honestly as close to heaven as I can imagine any place could be.
         

Unk, this is how we used to line up the shells as well you know.

Unk would often, (and I mean very often, like almost every time we’d see one), quote a limerick by Dixon Merritt (I had to Google to find that name). Unk would usually just do the first two lines, which are…

“A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.”

However sometimes he would finish the quote…
“He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week
But I'm damned if I see how the helican!”

Here are some photos from July 2016 of an Australian Pelican at Venus Bay, South Australia. We had gone there to see the vagrant Laughing Gull that was hanging around the caravan park. Unk never saw an Australian Pelican, but he would have loved them. I reckon he knows how much I miss him and what a huge influence he has had on the best parts of the man I am today.

I also included these two photos of Lynn and me at Venus Bay with Chuckles, the Laughing Gull (it stayed around there for over a year and acquired that nickname). He is the darker gull amongst the Silver Gulls.

I write therefore I am. I share, therefore it's real. I love because it is life.