Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
As the full moon continued to ascend over Lake Monger – and danced in and out of clouds – the sun had just set.
The pelican-sky image was captured within a few seconds of the previous post’s featured photo.
I looked left for the moon; the pelican was to our right.
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…at least in portrait view, Pelecanus onocrotalus – the Great White Pelican – is much more colourful than any version of Santa Claus.
No Santa – whether “bad” or “good”, repackaged by Coca-Cola or not – could even begin to match the pictured individual’s élan…almost-dishevelled, post-punk meets psychedeliia.
S/he (“she”, I think) and Pelican Yoga wish you a joyous festive season!
(to meet our hero/ine in person, Australians would need to use their passports)
Much as I would love to have taken this photo…
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Over the relevant eight minutes I remained seated, as the sole pelican’s feet stayed still, several metres away, ”planted” in shallow water near Lake Monger’s western shore.
S/he reminded me of several Irish button accordion masters I have viewed from a similar distance – their feet moving not at all, but their body’s upper half highly mobile, its many movements oft-unpredictable.
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This sequel to previous post is the fruit of summertime visits, pre-pandemic.
Warmer days offer their own particular photographic opportunities and challenges.
Heat haze and mirages can render some “long lens shots” utterly pointless.
However, they can be the making of others.
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One of the pleasures of Australian life is to look up and see pelicans “surfing the thermals”, soaring, spiralling ever-higher, with so very little apparent effort.
They are also wonderful to watch as they take off from water (or land on it); then, however, a great amount of effort is spectacularly evident.
Pelicans are one of “our” world’s largest, living, flying “machines”.
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Having just returned to WA, after three (mostly, offline) weeks in South Australia, Pelican Yoga today interrupts the ongoing “Aspects of Waychinicup” series.
This post foreshadows a two-part series; each chapter will celebrate a very different species, on the wing.
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The wing’s shape is such that it can push effectively against the air, and also generate lift as it moves forwards, but that is no use without a very powerful downstroke to capture the air in the first place, and this is where muscular strength comes in.
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The wrist and ‘hand’ of a bird contain far fewer bones than those of mammals and reptiles.
Through the evolutionary process that transformed a foreleg into a wing, some of the original bones have been lost, and others fused together.
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The lives of most flying birds are fast-paced and make tremendous physical demands upon them.
A robust framework is essential, but the bird skeleton also needs flexibility and to be light enough for flight.
Comments closedBirds are all that remain today of the dinosaurs.
The history of their emergence from the mighty theropod dinosaur lineage is told through millennia of fossils, and evidence of this ancestry is apparent in their living bodies today.
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