Batt: A scary story

Published 12:00 am Sunday, November 11, 2001

By Al Batt&lt!—-&t;.

Sunday, November 11, 2001

By Al Batt

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My neighbor Crandall stops by.

&uot;Nice day,&uot; I say.

&uot;You think so. Of course, if you thought anything, I should immediately call the people at the Guinness Book of World Records. I am sure there is no previous record of you ever having thought. You should have come over last night. The Hartland Cub Norwegians camped overnight in my woods. You know, I always hear how frightening it is how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.&uot;

&uot;The kids don’t scare so easily today,&uot; I say.

&uot;Well, I got them. I told them the story of what happened to me yesterday morning. I got out of bed and walked face first right into one of those sticky fly strips that I had hanging in the middle of the room. It was bad enough that the paper was stuck to me, but so were a lot of flies that were stuck to the sticky stuff. It will be a long time before any of those kids get a good night’s sleep. I think I put them off their smores.&uot;

When Crandall tells me the sun is shining, I have to look outside before I believe him, but I believe him on this.

The White Pelican

Each year, I take part in something called a Christmas Bird Count in Freeborn County. It is a great time to get together with friends and look for birds. For many years, we could count on finding a White Pelican in open water in Albert Lea at Christmas time. The pelican had a bad wing, so he lived all year in those waters.

He led an interesting life. Occasionally, he would find himself frozen into the ice and one of the local firemen would have to brave the ice in order to chop the big bird out of it. Yet another example of our unsung heroes. Spending much of the year by himself, our friend, the pelican, grew lonely. Pelicans are gregarious birds and he fell in love with a domestic white goose. He would follow her around like a puppy. It was a romance doomed from the start for the goose saw the would-be Romeo for what he was -&160;a pelican. The pelican passed from the scene a few years ago. I don’t blame the goose, but there are those who have referred to her as a &uot;blatant hussy.&uot; I figure it is something she will have to live with.

I do miss seeing the pelican. The pelican is an &uot;odd duck&uot; with his oversized bill and feet. My friend, the late Charles Flugum, expressed it well when he wrote of the pelicans in his book &uot;Birding From the Tractor Seat,&uot; &uot;each bird looking soberly down its long nose at the others.&uot;

They remind me of a former college professor of mine. He had those half-rimmed glasses that insisted on sliding down his nose. He often gave me the look that one pelican gives to another.

Dixon Merritt wrote these lines that will sound familiar to most. &uot;A wonderful bird is the pelican, his bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak enough food for a week, but I’ll be darned if I know how the helican.&uot; The pelican does have a huge bill that it uses as a grocery basket. A pelican’s bill can hold almost 3 gallons of water, more than twice the capacity of its stomach. I have watched many times as the pelicans fly over a lake, scanning the water for signs of fish. Sighting fish, the pelicans land on the lake and use their pouched bills to collect the fish.

White Pelicans like to fish together and are known for their cooperative activities. The White Pelican does not dive into the water, but collects its prey from the surface. The Brown Pelican, found in coastal areas, is a diver.

I love watching a flock of White Pelicans soaring overhead on a sunny day. They are spectacular fliers. They turn their bodies one way and look as though they are completely white birds. A slight twist and they look like large all-black birds. Yet another twist makes them disappear for an instant. Their majestic flights include rides on rising air thermals to great heights where they soar gracefully in large circles. The pelicans have large wings that make such flight possible. I have held a dead pelican (it had flown into a power line) and found that its wings were about 9 feet long.

Pelicans are colonial nesters, rearing their young on islands with sparse vegetation. The female lays two dull white eggs on the ground of an island and they are incubated for approximately 30 days. The parents will fly up to a 100-mile round trip to bring fish to their babies. The young, with faces that only a mother could love, begin flying at the age of 9 to 10 weeks of age.

However, the place where you will most likely see pelicans is on a lake that does not feature an island. They are not nesting in these areas. What you are seeing are nonbreeding birds -&160;either subadults or losers on the &uot;Pelican Dating Game.&uot;

A White Pelican is a large bird measuring 5 feet long and weigh 15-20

pounds. It has a yellow bill, pouch and feet. It is otherwise white except for black flight feathers. The pelican feeds on rough fish (mostly carp and gizzard shad) that are of little value to fishermen. The pelican is fairly quiet, but does issue the occasional grunt or croak. The White Pelican winters from Florida to South California and south to Panama. They arrive in Minnesota in early April to May and leave us during August through early November. I look forward to their return each year. They make good company -&160;unless you are a goose.

Etcetera

My wishes for Steph and Adele Helleksen are that they have as much fun traveling the marital road as my wife, The Queen B, and I have had.

A number of callers have asked about obtaining tapes of my stories. Please e-mail me or give me a call at 845-2836 and I will get one to you.

Please join me as I enjoy the birds, butterflies and the beaches of Costa Rica in February. It will be a vacation that won’t leave you feeling like you need a vacation. For more information on the trip, call 373-4705 or 800-328-4298. I’d appreciate your company.

&uot;Be the change you want to see in the world.&uot;-Gandhi

&uot;You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know if too soon is too late.&uot; -&160;Ralph Waldo Emerson

DO GOOD.

Allen Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. His e-mail address is SnoEowl@aol.com.