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Fish skipped over the clear calm water; and above, pelicans the younger brown, the older gray wheeled round and round in lordly flight, paused, gave a sudden half-turn, then fell into the water with widespread wings, and after a splash, rose with another skipjack in their pouch.
Storks and pelicans flew after him in feathery bands, to accompany him to the boundaries of the garden. "Now we will commence dancing," said the fairy; "and when it is nearly over at sunset, while I am dancing with you, I shall make a sign, and ask you to follow me: but do not obey.
Dogs, cats, cockatoes swinging on their perches, peacocks, parrots, pelicans, and every one of the cocks swarmed from the barnyards and garden and cellars, to add their shrill cries and shrieks to the universal babel.
On the 18th the mended Pinta, which had run ahead of the other two boats, reported that a large flock of birds had flown past; next day two pelicans hovered around, and all the sailors declared that a pelican never flew more than sixty or seventy miles from home. On September 21 a whale was seen "an indication of land," wrote the commander, "as whales always keep near the coast."
Gray pelicans came flapping around the mast; sea-birds sped hurtling by, their white bosoms rose-flushed by the western glow ... Again Sparicio's little furnace was at work, more fish, more macaroni, more black coffee; also a square-shouldered bottle of gin made its appearance.
From the south bridge I one morning saw, to my great satisfaction, a couple of white pelicans, the only ones that I found in Florida, though I was assured that within twenty years they had been common along the Halifax and Hillsborough rivers. My birds were flying up the river at a good height.
It is hardly credible what these extraordinary pouches will hold; it is said, that among other things, a man's leg with the boots on was once found in one of them. Pelicans live in flocks; they and the cormorants sometimes help one another to get a living. The cormorant is a species of pelican, of a dusky color: it is sometimes called the sea crow.
The hills are covered with sage-brush, full of little twittering birds. My bed is between two windows, and they fly across from one to the other, without minding me at all. Opposite is Alcatraz, a fortified island, but very peaceful-looking, the waves breaking softly all around it. It has still the Spanish name of the white pelicans with which it used to be covered.
Yet, as I stood upon its banks at sunset, when not a breath of air existed to break the stillness of the waters below me, and saw their surface kept in constant agitation by the leaping of fish, I doubted whether the river could supply itself so abundantly, and the rather imagined, that it owed such abundance, which the pelicans seemed to indicate was constant, to some mediterranean sea or other.
In their motion through the air, the pelicans imitate the procedure of the wild-goose, and form their van into an acute angle. When of full age, the male is superior in size to the swan, weighs twenty-five pounds, and from wing to wing extends not less than fifteen feet.
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